Living Luminously: Arnett Rollins

                                              Photo by Kim Bielmann Cabotaje 2011

                                                  

There is a difference between a practitioner with skills and one who uses intuition to guide his skills to heal what is sick in another.  It is rare to find someone who combines instinct and skill to create excellence in what they do.  Even more exceptional is finding an individual who has overcome great challenge, who has held on to hope, where others may see none, to create a life he finds worth living.  Arnett Rollins is one such individual who has dodged obstacle after obstacle to find and use his strengths and intuition to create a luminous life.

Over two years ago, I was dealing with a number of intense life stressors all at once: my sister was seriously ill, I was literally living in the midst of major remodeling and my father-in-law was dying.  My husband, who is an only child, and I were taking care of his parents.  Feeling achy, tired and generally unwell, I went to the doctor, but they couldn’t detect anything specifically wrong with me.  I was beginning to think that I’d finally hit a brick wall and worried that a total meltdown might be next.

Maybe a massage would help, but the place I had been going to for years closed its doors one day without explanation, and I hated to risk spending the money with someone new.  I reluctantly pulled up to a place I’d never been, walked in and asked if they had anyone who could give me a massage.  They made a call and told me if I could wait a couple of minutes Arnett would come in.  I didn’t mind waiting, but I wasn’t sure about getting a massage from a male therapist.  I was desperate, though, and decided to focus on the potential healing.

During a massage, I prefer not to talk and politely let Arnett know this was my wish.  The anticipated awkwardness was fleeting, and I surrendered to the skill of the therapist and the literal and figurative gritty residue I was carrying around from coping with so many difficult things began to melt away.  In Arnett’s care, I felt safe, respected and fully attended to.  I walked in on the verge of falling apart and left feeling well on the way to being renewed.

Having sampled a great many massages, I have to say that, though very few words were exchanged, I knew that Arnett was the rare therapist with great skill, the capacity to connect with another in need and the compassion to take care of them.  For the next year and a half, any time I felt that my well-being was in jeopardy, I went to Arnett.  On the couple of occasions that he was unavailable, I found an alternative therapist but was always reaffirmed that an individual capable of genuine healing was a rare find.

With my coaching business up and running, the idea of forming professional alliances and working out trades appealed to me and Arnett came to mind.  I would recommend him to anyone without reservation.  It was only when we decided to sit down and talk for the first time that I realized my own intuition had been correct in trusting Arnett and seeing his great potential.

Just back from a three month trip to Thailand where he spent one month traveling and two months learning Thai massage, he was open to sharing details of his life and philosophical about his path.  At age 32, Arnett feels he’s found work that is meaningful and fulfilling.  His journey to this place, however, was layered with challenge—the kind of challenge that makes you wonder how he found peace and his footing where others may not have. 

Growing up in Virginia Beach, he experienced extensive abuse.  Unprotected and lacking guidance, he was put out of high school.  At the age of 16 he and his girlfriend moved out and both managed to graduate.  Arnett saw the military as a place to make something of himself and entered the Air force for three years.  This was a false start, though, and upon leaving the military, he spent some time surfing and partying in Florida.  This, too, ultimately felt aimless and Arnett was craving more structure and a sense of doing something worthwhile. 

In his late 20s, he entered a massage therapy program at Fortis College and it was there that Arnett began to realize his potential and his capacity for caring and giving.  Though he had often been criticized by people close to him for his inability to open up, he found in the dimly lighted silence of the massage room he was able to use his intuition to deeply connect with the person who had come to him for help with relaxing or righting their body.  He was energized by a spirit of giving generously to others.

Now that he had finally found what felt like good work, Arnett was eager to learn more and to grow as a therapist.  When he decided to make the trip to Thailand, it was part getting out of town, part adventure and part education.  He hadn’t anticipated, however, the insights he would gain and the quality of people he would meet.  Over coffee, Arnett explained, “You don’t really find yourself until you take yourself to a foreign place—when everything that made you who you are is stripped away.  You find out how simple life can be—how humble you can become.  You start to create yourself—to become caring and compassionate.” 

I am always so excited to learn about others who are taking risks to grow and discover more of who they might be.  It was great to talk with Arnett about his experiences and to be inspired to notice questions about my own possibilities surfacing.  For this reason, I was less sad to learn that Arnett wasn’t staying put.  Rather, he was off to Perth, Australia to explore more of the world, to practice his skills and to reunite with a woman he’d met in Thailand—the next leg of his own eat, pray, love journey!  He’s gone for an indefinite amount of time, as he also met and connected with people from China and Indonesia while in Thailand and may well sojourn to those destinations, too. 

I believe Arnett lives luminously because he demonstrates so much of what I encourage here on the blog: let life unfold, honor your unique traveler and seek to find what creates the light within you.  When I asked him what propelled him forward when many others might succumb to self-loathing and self-destruction, he said “persistence and always holding on to hope for something better.”  When I inquired about what he hoped to find in his travels, he answered, “I don’t know…maybe I won’t know until I find it.  I’m just following pebbles in the sand.” 

He was a little nervous on the his last weekend in town, questioning what lay in front of him.  In spite of some fears, however, Arnett took flight and recent communication suggests that, once again, the world is opening up to him in unexpected and exhilarating ways.  “Don’t ignore the world,” Arnett encouraged in a recent e-mail.  “The world is there for us!”  We’ll be keeping in touch with him to find out how his path and his purpose continues to unfold and to gain inspiration to follow our own light.

Knowing that there are individuals out there who encounter considerable challenge and still leap forward in life, what excuses are you no longer able to make to yourself?  In what ways do you prevent yourself from experiencing everything the world has to offer you?