The Southern California Renaissance Faire started its seven-weekend season on Saturday.  Yes!

Even though I cringe every year at the thought of those seven precious weekends all in a row, the absolute alternate-reality fun of Faire draws me in with no regrets.  Whether the booth where I work is mobbed with customers or eerily quiet, from the early-morning set-up to late-evening putting everything away, it’s a step into another world. 

And it’s a community.  We know each other.  Visitors either become known to us and return each year, or pass on through and disappear.

Faire is always surprising, always fun, and sometimes sad, difficult, and poignant also.  Old friends stop attending.  Talented artists close their booths to focus on other aspects of their business.  Favourite actors move on to other venues and are replaced.  And they’re all sorely missed. 

But like any community, Faire goes on.  New artisans appear, new friends are made, and the underlying richness of Faire life continues undimmed.  The little fights, the disagreements, the silliness and laughter, the annoyance of noisy neighbors, the cheerful willingness of people to help - it truly is a community,  strange as that might sound.

Faire is a gift to me. 

When I step into that alternate reality, the so-called real-world concerns of business and day-to-day life simply vanish.  In that way, it was my earliest experience of truly living in the moment, with no regrets, no worries, no anxiety about the future.

It’s a community I visit for the weekends of just two months each year, with all the time in between of what we Rennies call “mundane life.”   Because of that, it’s an astonishing barometer of where I am within myself. 

I’ve attended various Renaissance Faires for a dozen years now, initially as a patron, and for the last nine seasons or so as a participant, working at a booth. 

Attending Opening Weekend this year, I was stopped in my tracks by how much I’ve changed over those years.   There’s simply no self-consciousness any more, no angst about my costume, no internal debate about whether someone will agree with what I say, or if I can say the right thing to help someone come to a decision about a purchase. 

Whether I’m demonstrating the use of a magic wand to a skeptical child, helping our teenage assistant feel less awkward as she learns the ways of the booth, or exchanging creative insults with the village peddler, there’s simply no little-me there to get in the way.  

And in seeing this so clearly at Faire, I see also how this way of simply being, with no story about what that means, has been informing my business as well. 

My networking class:  my students learned to find their own paths to unselfconsciousness in interacting with others, delighting me with their unsolicited testimonials reporting their newfound confidence and success.  My newsletters:  readers describe how they try my suggestions and surprise themselves with their results.  And my clients:  they find their own abilities, depths, and joy, and then express their appreciation to me publicly (in testimonials) as well as privately. 

My gratitude for all of this, for the ways in which what I do moves through me and the ways in which the people I work with respond to that movement, is humbling and huge – and delightfully joyful.

I realized recently that when I’m anxious about being good enough, everything I do is for me – to prove myself. 

As soon as I stop worrying about saying or doing the right thing for my clients, I’m free to simply be there with them, meeting them where they are and responding to them in ways that they can hear, feel, and act upon.  

And little-me simply disappears.

Which is a very good thing.