Late last year my bed completely collapsed as I sat down to put on my shoes. Collapsed with a bang just like they do in the cartoons. It was the fourth, and what I decided right then, last time it would collapse. The jury rigged bolts by the moving guys from a number of moves had become both stripped or had broken inside the frame, so I took the bed apart and set the pieces in the hallway. I put my box spring and my mattress on the floor.

I thought it would be an inconvenience to have my bed on the floor. Instead, it was an elixir. Sitting on my bed on the floor I was instantly transported--I am nearly forty years younger, I am just out of college at any one of my first few apartments, when all I had was a futon on the floor and a milk crate as a bed side table.

The amazing thing is that when I say “I felt young again” it was as much a sensation as a mix of feelings. I felt the way I felt, I could see the world through the lens I saw through then. It was an experience of virtual reality except it was actually very real for me at one time and the physical experience of being on the floor brought it all back in living color and surround-sound feelings.

It was such a strong reminder that our physiology at any given time can be such a strong force on our psyches—in every real sense our physiology is our psyche—and the complete shift in my worldview by merely viewing the world from the floor brought this point home.

As I sat on my bed on the floor I noticed a couple of big things. One is that I was flooded with contentment. At twenty-two I didn’t need much. I was happy to be out on my own and didn’t notice or didn’t care that I didn’t have much. I didn’t care that any furniture I had was picked from the trash. I had a job, I had a place to live, I had friends, and that was all I wanted. And that same feeling of having all I need came flooding back. Adulthood is filled with responsibilities and each new responsibility is often connected with needing more and more resources whether it is time or money or people. Sitting on my bed on the floor catapulted me back to the reality that you can experience abundance in very limited circumstances.

And the next feeling that washed over me was the feeling that the world is full of possibility. At twenty-two I had no idea what I was going to do for the rest of my life, but nothing was ruled out. It is an expansive feeling like looking out at a wide-ranging landscape. You look over the whole horizon wondering where you want to walk to. And really there is no pressure to go anywhere at all: just the freedom of looking out with the ability to wonder can be enough. And sitting on my bed on the floor I suddenly had that same experience of expansiveness and possibility.

These two big feelings: the contentment of having all I need and the feeling of expansiveness and wonder combined to create a really powerful energy, an energy that made me feel like I could do anything I really wanted to do. At nearly sixty I know that everything isn’t really a possibility—and I am actually much more settled in who I am than I was a twenty-two. But the energy I had then was great—and getting reacquainted with it was an amazing and surprising gift from finding myself on the floor with broken bed pieces at the start of a day.

There’s a psychological term for this feeling of nostalgia --the reminiscence bump –the strong vivid memories we can get of our youth and especially our early 20’s. There are many theories for this but the strongest is that this is a time of life when we are forming our narrative—when we discover through our experience who we are. Which is why it is so powerful to not only remember it—but remember it vividly—with full feeling.

So, if you are feeling like you could use some of your youthful enthusiasm or hope, or if you would like to tap back in to the part of yourself that once could operate with a sense of wonder, instead of certainty—if you want to travel back through a portal of possibility, you need to find your own version of my ‘broken-bed-time-machine.’

Maybe you never slept on a futon on the floor. But maybe you went barefoot, or drove with the windows rolled all the way down with no particular destination. It might be a certain kind of car, or drink, or a certain view or sitting in the bleachers watching your favorite sport. Or maybe it’s your favorite music that takes you back when you hear the song. Or maybe it’s a special place where you get a sense of possibility. When I need to reconnect to the possibility in myself I go back to my college campus and sit in the amphitheater where Dr. Maya Angelou was our Class of ’87 graduation speaker. She sang, recited poetry and stated clearly that there were big problems in the world – problems like racism, sexism, ignorance and hatred, saying that there needed to be people to take those problems on. She paused and then asked, ‘Will it be you?’

You don’t have to wait for your bed to break to find possibility. You can seek it out. Whenever I need to find the feelings of possibility, passion and purpose again—when that battery needs recharging-- I drive out and sit on the grass seats -- and I argue with myself, the world and the problems as I see them until I am reminded of the possibility for change that I once felt.

For some inspiration, two sources of Dr. Angelou at Mount Holyoke College graduation 1987

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