We visited some of our very best friends in Turkey. It is a place that specializes in service. The food preparation has a seriousness. A haircut is a performance. A beard trim is choreography.
The traditional Turkish hammam ritual is service in its most private form. The practitioner literally scrubs your body, washing you like a baby. Because I was there with my daughter, my attendant called me “Mommy.” I told her she was making me feel like a baby. So she began calling me “baby” and pointing to herself: “Mommy.” We giggled. The mommy became the baby as I was scrubbed and rubbed in a way I haven’t been since I was held in my mother’s hands, in the rust-colored sink of her kitchen.
That rust-colored metal sink is no longer in my mother’s kitchen. It was remodeled out of the house decades ago. The memory of it returned during a breathwork therapy session a few years back. Until then, I had forgotten it ever existed.
When I remembered the sink, I also remembered my mind inside it: the simplicity of observing all. I was small enough to fit in two hands, small enough to be washed in an ordinary kitchen sink. What is this? What is that? This feels nice.
I loved being babied and scrubbed by this confident, strong woman in the hammam. I loved being covered in bubbles and massaged. I don’t think I have ever been so clean.
When I guide travelers in Creative Journeys, I am the service provider. I usher them across the river of their minds and help them locate their deep connection to self, muse, or inner baby. I am a mother, a witness, a neutral participant - whatever they need. I transform to meet it.
I envision a world in which we all take turns serving each other.
I can deeply appreciate the service given to me, as I know that I also feel deeply satisfied by the service I give to others. The more I give, the more I feel deserving.
I wonder if our current societal extremes keep us from being as physically and mentally fit because it results in those who only serve and those who only receive. Service and serving are acts of beauty. The stuck-ness is the problem.