Your welcome. You are welcome. You’re welcome.

It’s strange, but I have a hard time saying “you’re welcome.” When someone thanks me for something, I feel sheepish. Maybe it’s impostor syndrome. It always felt condescending for me. I don’t know why. I’ve never felt that way about anyone who said it to me, so why should I feel that way about myself?

“Thank you” I can say. I still have weird neurotic hang ups about it. But I can say it. My fear is that the person to whom I direct my thanks will doubt my sincerity. I have this lifelong fear or guilt that someone who would show me a kindness won’t feel my gratitude. Maybe that’s part of my impostor syndrome, too. Why should anyone do anything nice for little ol’ me? I’d better thank them profusely.

But words and phrases are weird that way. Especially the words and phrases we use so often that we forget their true meaning. You’re welcome…. welcome…. y’welcome, you welcome, you are welcome.

It’s like hello or goodbye or bleshoo. We make these sounds out of social convention and the sounds become reflexive, devoid of meaning.

yawellcumb

Beetles in boxes, our semiotic pablum.

But I got to thinking about the words: You are welcome. What a beautiful sentiment I’ve been saying (insecurely, unsurely, almost reluctantly), for as long as I’ve known that thank you required a response. But think about the words: YOU ARE WELCOME. It has that namaste energy to it. You are welcome in my heart, because the love in my heart recognizes the love in your heart. The god in me sees the god in you.

And I realize that goodbye means God is with you… adios… a dios, to God….and it all makes just a little bit more sense. Incidentally, is godspeed faster than 186,000 miles-per-second? Asking for a friend… just a little light humor.

All the things we say without thinking about what they mean. All the beetles in hermetically sealed boxes waiting to be examined, dissected, dismembered, and remembered.

I would mumble, unworthily, furtively with a sense of humility, “yerwelcome.”

But now I will shout it from the mountaintops (or just my high-tops) YOU ARE WELCOME… not because you occupy space in my head… no. You are welcome to share this plane of existence where we meet behind the net of existence. The space between the breaths, the now between the nanoseconds, the now-no-seconds. The truth between the paradox where nothing makes sense because nothing needs to make sense.

You are Welcome.

Namaste here with you.