I am listening to Robert Johnson tonight and wanted to share these songs with you.
“But much of Johnson’s life is shrouded in mystery. Part of the lasting mythology around him is a story of how he gained his musical talents by making a bargain with the devil: Son House, a famed blues musician and a contemporary of Johnson, claimed after Johnson achieved fame that the musician had previously been a decent harmonica player, but a terrible guitarist—that is, until Johnson disappeared for a few weeks in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Legend has it that Johnson took his guitar to the crossroads of Highways 49 and 61, where he made a deal with the devil, who retuned his guitar in exchange for his soul.
Strangely enough, Johnson returned with an impressive technique and, eventually, gained renown as a master of the blues. While his reported ‘deal with the devil’ may be unlikely, it is true that Johnson died at an early age.”
I was out walking the beach today at that time of day when the very last winter light is slipping behind the islands across the water. I spied this last little bit of sunlight hidden away on the beach. It felt as if the sunlight wanted to linger just a bit longer on this gorgeous winter day.
Sometimes it feels as if my ideas, hopes, and fantastical schemes are sinking beyond unknown horizons along with the sun. But I know that nature has a way of keeping me both humbled and blessed. There is nothing like solitude and tranquility and beauty to discover and re-discover who I am and what I am capable of and how much I want to be part of the larger whole that brings peace to my part of the world.
On days when the sun is setting and it feels to be a daunting effort to keep on the sunny side, my memory harvests sunsets like this. Takes it in and tucks it away. I am reminded to keep sight of the bigger picture. And to not let go of the beauty that graces every single day. Every single day. Like the aperture on my camera, I have the ability to make it very very tiny and block out the essential parts that add to the beauty and to the panorama of Hope that feeds my desire to grow and to contribute.
Every day I pray for a little miracle. And today this sunset was it. It reminded me to appreciate the quiet and to still the voices that do not feel to have my better interests at heart. It reminded me to be in the moment and look to the present — which is my true daily miracle — one heartbeat at a time.
What struck me about this video is not simply the skill, commitment, dedication, and fearlessness that Thovex has devoted to his skiing. What struck me is that there are many moments on the video — if not throughout its entirety — where it feels that if Thovex had hesitated for one micro-second, he might have crashed into a tree or gone flying off the mountain into a rock wall. Mission Not-Accomplished.
I am not and have never been one to seek thrills by daredevil skiing down the mountain or by catching air on my kiteboard in ultra-cold seawater or by jumping out of an airplane. I love to hike the trail but am not interested in rock or ice climbing. Still, I was thinking about how this incredibly gutsy video parallels my life.
I actually can see how it does apply to my fiddle playing or my writing or my positive intending or my Thoreau-esque sauntering down the road through the forest or . . . you get the idea. Not exactly the stuff of thrills, spills, and chills to an observer. But this is my life. It matters to me how I feel as I absorb and interpret the environment that I have chosen to live in. Without hesitation.
Hesitation. It has its merits. I have certainly jumped all willy-nilly into certain situations and have not emerged with what has felt to be at the time the best of outcomes. And before I am too quick to judge a crazy outcome, I do realize that there is a bigger picture I cannot see. An unfinished play that has not been yet written. A dance that is still being choreographed. An elaborate tapestry that only allows me to see the underside — the side with the knots, the threads, and the inevitable slubs — all the while knowing that there is a gorgeous pattern seen from above. There is fate and there is destiny. There are many metaphors, allegories, analogies, and similes that I have read and that I have tried to apply like a Band-Aid to my wounded soul when I have really mucked up. Depending on the degree of mucking, these word pictures have provided temporary solace and have gotten me through to the next time I did not hesitate. And knowing me, the opportunity would certainly be there.
I have thrown caution to the proverbial wind and plunged into relationships, jobs, adventures at random. My brother and I are still laughing about the night that we got frozen out of our March camping trip without a tent in the unexpected snow and had to seek free hospitality à la couch surfing (we were broke: hence why we were snow camping) from one of the Lower Tavern’s regulars (stranger to us), Duane. Not exactly flying down a mountain at incredible speeds like Thovex but a leap of faith, nonetheless, that resulted in a high-speed Dukes-of-Hazzard car chase up an S-curved gravel road (we were actually the pursuers, not our host Duane). Yes, a leap of faith and a lengthy journal entry and a re-affirmation of my knowing that angels do exist. At the very least, I can say that we were not in Hesitation Mode.
Still, hesitation is not all that it is billed to be. It can really mess life up. If there are Band-Aid moments when I have not hesitated, I am thinking that there are exponentially more times when I have hesitated. Waffled. Procrastinated. Buried my head in the sand. Dinked around. Hoped it would go away or resolve on its own. I didn’t know what to do, so I hesitated. At the time, I simply didn’t realize that not making a decision is still making a decision. I am wanting to grow my awareness of this now. To hesitate or not to hesitate is not the question. They are exactly the same thing.
Although I am mightily aware of my propensity to jump first and think later, my perspective has changed slightly. There is the juxtaposition of spontaneity and hesitation. And there is the contrasting effect of believing and knowing. We believe with our minds, but we know with our hearts. We say what we think, but we act with our hearts. And . . . “Sometimes your only transportation is a leap of faith.” — Margaret Shepard
I have a research-oriented mind. And a creative heart. Maybe this is the challenge I create for myself. Perhaps I am so busy dissecting experiences into rational bits of mind and body and soul, I am creating moments of hesitation that would be best lived by just allowing my knowing self to have the wheel. Put my believing into the back seat — certainly invite it along — without the benefit of a spare steering wheel.
Can there really be so many complex parts to such a simple whole — this thing called life? Believing is important. Knowing is important. Really knowing. When I allow the seamless marriage of these two . . . Pilgrim, look out and hold on! Things are going to start happening in ways that my mind could not have ever imagined on its own.
One of my favorite quotes is “Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen.“ This has been a guiding quote through some challenging times in recent history. I have this quote scattered throughout my house. It is written on the front of my journal. I really value this quote. But I am adding to it today:
Always know that something wonderful is happening right now. Right now.
Walt Whitman wrote: “To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.” There are feelings of comfort, peacefulness, appreciation, and joy in not only believing this but knowing that this true.
Miracles happen. They do. Every single moment. I KNOW this to be true. My awareness of an “unspeakably perfect miracle” erases the seam between my believing and my knowing. Embrace the moment. Ski the mountain. Know the miracle. Without hesitation.
Hope. What is it? I like the acronym for Hope in this image: Help Other People Evolve. What a great way to make hope real in my life: helping others. When I help others evolve and express my caring, I become witness to the promise of growth or change. This is not only exciting, it is inspiring. When I see someone else’s success or joy or delight as a result of their willingness to take the risk to evolve, I am blessed with hope concerning my life as well. It all comes full circle in the simplest and most elegant of ways. Hope gives back hope.
Hope keeps us alive. Without growth and change in life, I tend to lose focus of why I am on the planet. When I do not feel hope burning inside of me, life feels more than hopeless. It feels pointless. When I lose my sense of direction and feel utterly lost in a fearful place, I can feel hope being extinguished by despair and worry and fear.
These emotions disable my forward evolution, instead I am spiraled into a hopeless state of devolution. While a modern scientist might state that there is no such thing as devolution, I believe that my spirit and my intuition would disagree. I know, internally, when I am evolving into a new state of “advancement” and when I am devolving into a previous primitive state — those experiences that we sometimes refer to as being 2 steps forward and 3 steps backward. I like to feel growth and positive movement as a result of hopeful living. I have an aversion for devolution.
I like this acoustic version of the song “Despair” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It is one of those songs that is both sad (with the potential for the self to be swallowed by overwhelming regret), yet it is hopeful. It speaks of wasted years, tears, and fears.
What sometimes feels like the path of least resistance can lead to “wasted years.” There have been times when I have given up hope and “settled” for various “hopes” that were not real: financial security, available opportunities, self-limitations on skills or resources — all perceptions and oftentimes a poor assessment of reality.
In January of 2014, I met a man from Jamaica on the beach in Hawaii. He said he was almost 80 years old, but he looked like he was in his early 60s. Life on the island was treating him well. His name was Cliff. We talked. He had a lot of interesting things to say. He asked to take some pictures of my hair before we said good bye.
Cliff told me that I was going to have the best year of my life. At the time, I thought that it was so kind of him to say such nice things. I wanted to believe that he was a prophet and that he could see things that I could not see at the time — things that I had lost complete hope of ever realizing or enjoying.
We parted paths, and I remembered his words throughout 2014. His words gave me hope. True Hope. Based on his prophetic words, I stopped settling for second or third best. I changed my game. I looked for better when things were just okay. When “bad” things happened — like getting laid off from work — great things kept happening as a result of these fear-inducing negative things. My life shifted into Amazing. Really great things presented themselves as a result of research, reaching out, staying alert, moving forward without fear, and hoping. Dreams that I have held for many years have grown into reality. Who would have thought?
Today? I feel like a Public Service Announcement for the Do-Not-Give-Up-Your-Hope campaign. Don’t stop hoping. Own your hopes. Act on your dreams. Don’t settle for second or third or fourth best. Don’t settle. “If it’s all in my head there’s nothing to fear . . . Nothing to fear inside . . .” Let me be your Cliff and hear that 2015 is going to be the best year of your life. The Best Year.
Partial lyrics from “Despair” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs:
“Don’t despair, you’re there
From beginning to middle to end
Don’t despair, you’re there
Through my wasted days
You’re there through my wasted nights
Oh despair, you’ve always been there
You were there through my wasted years
Through all my lonely fears, no tears
Run through my fingers, tears
They’re stinging my eyes, no tears
If it’s all in my head there’s nothing to fear
Nothing to fear inside
Through the darkness and the light
Some sun has got to rise”
The way that things stack up don’t always make sense. You look at a rock cairn and you see dissimilar shapes and textures and sizes. What doesn’t naturally fit together neatly and perfectly into one whole structure has the potential to allow for balance to offset the dissimilarities in size and shape.
Cairns represent a balance that requires delicacy and a measure of hope. They offer natural beauty presented in a random-deliberate-natural sort of way. A lot like life. They do not ask for some added adhesive that will make the balancing act a little easier. The rocks defy gravity by leaning on each other. Cairns have the potential to stand for a very long time. They represent the possibilities that I might have overlooked otherwise.
I am thinking that cairns in the right setting appeal to me. I do like to see them on the beach below high tide such that the tide will roll in and eradicate the evidence of man — restoring a different natural order. The ocean is persistent that way.
I have an old scale that I bought at an estate sale. This scale has seen better-balanced days. In order for the pointer to balance the beam, I had to add several tiny antique French coins in one of the weights pan. The coins bring everything up to true. Balance. What is it exactly? We seek it. We desire it. We believe that we would appreciate how it feels . . . if we could only be certain that we are actually experiencing it. There are books and poems and songs written about balance. Still, I do not know exactly what it means or how it feels in my life.
We weigh decisions. And justice. And mercy. And priorities. And options. We weigh fairness and love and life. We somehow intuit when something isn’t feeling quite right, so we start to mess with the scale. We add more coins. Or we pick up a different rock to add to the cairn. We deliberate. Or we sometimes say the-hell-with-it and just give it a go.
Life’s events tumble together, and my carefully-constructed towers of well-thought-out plans are strewn all willy-nilly. Sometimes I am left with the oddest of pieces to balance back together again. I see the beauty in the pile of rocks that are before me, and I seek guidance and allow my intuition to lead me.
I recently read a great Irish proverb: “A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything.” I so agree. A good laugh is like medicine and a long sleep restores the body and the soul. Along the vein of cairns, I was thinking about which life blessings provide me with balance: laughter, sleep, forgiveness, appreciation, humility, kindness, patience, travel, adventure, discovery, learning, courage . . .
The way that things stack up at times doesn’t always make sense, but I continue to attempt to counterbalance with those things that point me to true.
I found this quote by Marianne Williamson as I was clicking through folders on my external hard drive. I tried to remember the circumstances under which I felt compelled to take the time to copy this quote and save it under the folder entitled “Choices,” but the date stamp of over 2 years ago on the document was not enough of a clue. What was I doing, feeling, or thinking two years ago? Was I at some intersection of hope and denial . . . and a’waiting some guidance to come traveling my way?
“The choice to follow love through to its completion is the choice to seek completion within ourselves. The point at which we shut down on others is the point at which we shut down on life. We heal as we heal others, and we heal others by extending our perceptions past their weaknesses. Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who that person is. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness, we don’t really know what love is. Forgiving others is the only way to forgive ourselves, and forgiveness is our greatest need.” – Marianne Williamson
This is a great quote. Marianne Williamson is an inspiring and excellent writer. Whenever I read her writing, I feel inspired to stretch a little further and search a little deeper. It is good to read words that encourage me to grow in exponential directions. I find that I can only read so much of Williamson’s writing before it is time to set the book aside for some absorption time. It makes for a slow read this way, but I always feel enriched and guided by the thoughts that are inspired by her words.
I do not create very much time to read in my daily life and, as a result of this non-priority, I have been carrying the same book by Marianne Williamson on various vacations for over 5 years. The book has a lot of notes scribbled in the margins and the pages are curled along the edges. There is beach sand embedded where the pages meet the binding. If you hold the book open and fan the pages, the reminder of Hawaii will sift onto the table. The cover is faded from sunlight, and the pages have been dog-eared and un-dog-eared. I am about 1/3 of my way through the book. It looks like this book is going to see a lot more travel by the time it is retired on the bookshelf. It is too worn and weary of a passenger to be passed on to a different reader.
Besides, trying to decipher someone else’s notes in the page margins always breaks the flow for the new reader. It leaves one wondering why the passage on this page is so significant that someone took the time to pen a remark. The new reader feels that he or she perhaps missed some essential point that the previous reader clearly pounced on and duly noted. I find that it is better to start with a fresh book than to try to analyze another reader’s scribbles and observations. Maybe I am odd that way, but I like to create my own flow.
I thought I lost the book on one of my trips to Hawaii, so I bought a new copy that was all clean and smooth. Then the old copy re-surfaced in a carry-on bag while packing for a trip, so I switched the newer version for the original version. Back to Square One in the home-i-est of fashions.
So, I was reading from my well-traveled book the other day — now that I am traveling for a few months — and thinking about how life has moved me into a blessed place in time: an imaginative and real culmination of a dream I have nurtured for well over 10 years. It feels as if I am in a magical bubble that is allowing for me to pursue interests and dreams and disciplines that have felt to be so distant from my daily reality. I am exercising everyday again. I have all of my instruments out of their cases and at-the-ready to be played. I l-o-v-e this. I have my laptop set up in an inspiring spot in the new house I am renting for the winter — with a view to the west and to the north. I am cooking from recipes — not simply broiling a quesadilla or throwing compatible food ingredients into a pot and calling it good. I baked chocolate chip cookies yesterday. For those of you who regularly bake, this may not seem like such an extraordinary thing. But for me? It has been many years since I have done anything even remotely this wonderfully culinary. The cookies came out too dark, flat, and lacy at the edges . . . not my preferred genre of cookie. Still. I made cookies and the house smells great.
I feel that I am in this gracious bubble of choosing to make conscious choices.
Still, being in this extraordinary moment is the culmination of many challenging times and sometimes-awkward choices. I have stated my preferences and not stated my preferences. I have turned left when it might have been more advantageous to have turned right. I have laughed when it was inappropriate and I have cried when the tears weren’t worth the effort. Everything has all somehow flowed into one channel that has led me to a time of feeling peaceful and fulfilled. With life’s chaos reigning these past years, I have the awareness to appreciate the bubble while it is floating. And it feels great.
I sometimes feel as if we are afraid to celebrate too loudly . . . these delightful and surprising moments of awesome-icity that just make for incredibly-saturated present moments and delicious memories. If I celebrate too loudly, will moments like this ever return to me? Haven’t I been trained to hide my ecstatic joy under a bushel basket, lest it be conceived as a negative sort of expression that speaks too loudly? I don’t know. Maybe I was raised in a more stringent time or culture — one in which we are taught to not proclaim feelings of joy too loudly. It might make someone else feel badly. Or it might be perceived as bragging or trouncing someone else who is struggling. Or it might be simply bad manners.
Is it? I hope not. That would never be my intent. Never. I am just simply feeling the atmospheric joy of the bubble.
What’s next? I wrote in my journal yesterday. I thought of several things and wrote them down in my signature columns and charts and boxes that organize my thoughts. Then I realized that what has essentially led to Now has been honoring my intentions, my dreams, and my goals. The lines from all of those columns and lists and analyses have been blurred into Now.
Events, blessings, and surprising circumstances are possible. The bubble is real. Dreams may not line up in my presupposed perfect chronological order, but I received the encouraging confirmation this winter that if I keep the dream safe to my heart and extend it to the greatness of the Universe, it will all come ’round right.
I tell myself everyday, “Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen.” Some days I don’t believe in this as ardently as other days. But today? Today has been an extraordinarily good day. I walked in the forest and on the beach. I didn’t see another soul the entire time I was out. I wrote. I played my mandolin and kept my own time without a metronome. I finished baking the second half of the chocolate chip cookie batter, hoping that by refrigerating the dough overnight the cookies might look better coming out of the oven. They didn’t. They are even more burnt looking and lacier-edged, and flatter. They are stored in the freezer for some hapless house guest who will be offered a frozen, home-baked cookie.
Life is good. I l-o-v-e this song! Kool and the Gang are awesome!
Today is January 2nd, and I am thinking about the List of Intentions for 2015 that I scribbled in my journal. Being a process-oriented innovative type and not the get-‘er-done-and-check-‘er-off-the-list implementer type, there is nothing on my list with any defined or measurable outcomes. In the past, I have tried to quantify resolutions into SMART-goal format — unsuccessfully so — as I gravitate toward quality experiences that are momentary and poof they are gone.
As I result, I do not make any New Year Resolutions. I don’t say that I am going to kick butt at the gym and run for 10K 6 days a week, or that I am going to write 2000 words daily in one of my ongoing short stories. I do say that I am heading to the gym or that I am going to write when the afternoon quiets down. Perhaps if I were to quantify or to schedule such things, life would feel more accomplished. Would I feel more successful? I don’t know. I read once that it is better to schedule one’s priorities, rather than prioritize one’s schedule. It is something to experiment with: schedule my priorities.
On my list for 2015, I wrote things down such as: Smile more. Laugh at absurd moments that enter my life. Meditate. Exercise my mind and my body. Play “Allegro” on violin and/or mandolin and do not slow down to lento in the more difficult passages. Dance more.
I used to go dancing every weekend. Friday or Saturday or Sunday night. . . or all three nights. It was an important part of my physical, mental, and social life. It still is important to me . . . I just don’t go to the bars anymore to get my dance groove going.
I woke up this morning with Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” running through the latter stages of my dream. Then I found this awesome video, and it really made me smile. And laugh out loud. I felt so good that I felt prompted to tune my violin. It was cantankerous due to having been moved into a new climate, but it is happily singing now. I then spent some time meditating to further enjoy the morning. Meditating always feels good. When I completed my meditation, I found myself humming “The Twist.” Then I replayed the video again. Turned up the volume on my laptop and twisted with the awesome dancers on this video. This definitely put me in a very happy place. Back to one of my intentions: laugh at absurd moments.
What does this mean to me? The power of writing. The connection of writing to realizing my goals and my dreams. After scrawling my “resolutions,” I was not consciously aware that I was following my morning’s “to-be-experienced” list. When I wrote these things, I was thinking of a fuzzy concept to be wafted into my future 2015 — things that I enjoy doing or experiencing.
What I learned from this? In the morning, make a short list of intentions that I would like to experience today. Nothing definite or solid . . . just things that would be fun or fanciful or maybe even practical to see or to do or to be. Then see what happens. Write down wacky or unlikely things along with the more specific things with measurable outcomes like going to the gym or taking 10 photographs to document today’s awesomeness.
So, I guess this does create a resolution for me this year. Be open. Write things down in a dedicated notebook. Look back at what I have written at the end of the year. Start checking things off. [This is beginning to feel like SMART goals!] Be happy and celebrate the things in life that give me joy and that provide laughter.
It is post-Christmas week. One of my favorite weeks of the year. Thanksgiving feels to be so long ago. Christmas Day is in the near past. For many, the practice of giving is now moving into a new dimension. We tend to shift our sense of openness, generosity, awareness of others and their needs after the holidays. There are so many ways to give.
I have witnessed many selfless acts during this past holiday season. It has been a blessing to see how openly and sweetly and richly others have shared their love, goodwill, traditions, and time. I am thinking of the fabulous feasts that were so generously prepared by family during this recent holiday season. The measure of time and love and sense of tradition that went into these meals was truly amazing. I felt the love when I saw all of the cookbooks opened on the kitchen counter, the living room coffee table, and the couch. I could feel the meals from holidays past lilting from the open and stained and dog-eared pages. There were homemade cookies to be enjoyed. Chips and vegies to be dipped. Crackers to be cheesed. The variety of dishes served was astonishing, actually.
When my daughters were young, it was our tradition that they would create the holiday menu. It was fun and always a culinary adventure. The menu was generally quite limited to a few favorite foods that were general considered to be taboo by any nutritional standards. And the added bonus was that their menus demanded a blessedly brief amount of time and a decided lack of culinary talent on my part.
I think of the year that I served red Jell-O in the shape of teddy bears with freshly-whipped cream. Or the year that we ate nothing but potato chips and onion dip for the entreé and pumpkin pie for dessert. These were not incidents of pure laziness or nutritional abuse on my part. These meals built a foundation of culinary autonomy . . . it was a day of Anything Goes. Why not? We were not serving others who held expectations of basted turkey, cornmeal stuffing, and giblet gravy. We were Gastronomic Outlaws – bucking the current societal holiday conventions that demanded hours of shopping, food preparation, and marathon clean-up.
There was one year that I did cook a turkey. It was a rare year, as we had family visiting us and it would not do to forego the traditional meal. Whining from one of my more outspoken house guests would ensue, and we could not have that. Placating with a cooked bird was preferable to listening to his traditional ranting.
Alas, we don’t remember enjoying the golden-brown-basted turkey from that year because we lost our power and our running water for five days, starting on Christmas Day morning – about 1.5 hours into bird-cooking time. I remember looking at the turkey that was half-cooked in the electric-powered oven . . . wondering how I could possibly continue to cook an entire bird while balancing it on the top of the old barrel wood stove in the living room.
The solution? I went out to the woodshed and got a shovel and buried the turkey in the field. We had no refrigeration and no promise as to when the power would return to us. I didn’t want to invite any unwelcome poultry illness . . . or any opportunistic animals to come marauding in the night, had I tossed the uncooked bird onto the compost pile. As insane as this sounds, it felt like a righteous act to bury poor Tom Turkey, as my heart was not entirely in agreement with cooking an unfortunately-fated bird that year. A silent blessing was bestowed. R.I.P.
While we still had daylight, we went sledding instead on Hamburger Hill – the name of the sledding run behind the school . . . one that had been dangerously groomed by the school children during the previous weeks before Christmas break. It was a fun and memorable and active way to spend the day. We came home and made hot chocolate by balancing a tea kettle on the round arc of the barrel stove. We made peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches by candle light and finished the meal off with Christmas cookies. Not even my best of turnaround traditional attempts was to come to fruition. Only minimal whining about the peanut butter was uttered by the Traditional Outspoken Relative. We had somehow managed to maintain our time-honored tradition of eating minimalistic nutrition for yet another holiday.
That is why the meals from this current year were exemplary. All of the stops were pulled. It was one wing-ding of a holiday meal. I do not recall ever seeing so much love poured into a meal that was to be served to loved ones. My daughters? They served up seconds and thirds on dishes that they had never tasted before. Green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, soft white-flour rolls . . . What had they been missing all of these years?
But who said that you always have to serve the perfect holiday meal that fulfills all of the nutritional requirements of the food pyramid? We have survived the sugar highs, the salt-induced edema, the Year of the Sauerkraut, the subsequent tummy aches, and, yes, the year of the peanut-butter sandwiches. And we have built a lot of memories along the way.
It is strange how even non-traditions present as gifts of love. It is a way to measure . . . a way of setting fence posts through time. There are so many ways to give. We give through sharing, through accepting, through laughing through the crazier moments that define where we are today. What we choose for today.
We have an amazing opportunity to give. To breathe life into a holiday in ways that are unexpected. Memories are forged and we laugh in spite of the years that felt to be a bit tougher. Life is good. There is much to be appreciated. And we anticipate the next holiday season with wonder and awe – never knowing what it may bring to us in the way of unexpected gifts.
What do you think? “How many times should you try?” These inspiring examples of people believing in their ideas, skills, and talents are incredibly inspirational. 1500 times to launch Rocky? Amazing. 1500 times. Which of my projects do I believe to be so perfect or so inspirational that I am willing to subject my idea to 1499 rejections? That is a lot of Belief.
So, the question is: How many times should you try? What project or dream or invention or book or screenplay or song or practice or blog or . . . are you committed to launching? How many times should you try? Will you try?
Should is a loaded word in these days of intentional and mindful living. Google’s “define:should” gives this definition: “used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone’s actions.” Obligation. Duty. Correctness. Criticism. No wonder many of us bristle when we encounter the word should. I should do this. I should have done that. I should take care of this. I should be nicer to him. To her. To me. I should have worked harder. Run harder. Played harder. I should be better at that. This list is endless. All of the many shoulds.
I ask myself: What are some of my common shoulds? I sometimes think that I am too hard on myself. And there are those times when I am too quick to step aside and let fate and coincidence charge into each other.
When this happens, I wonder why I seem to take myself out of my own life’s equation — only to later banish myself to the Realm of Should. I shouldn’t have said that. I should have stayed home. I should have been more aware. I shouldn’t have danced like such a dork. I should have been more supportive. I should have been a better self-advocate. I should have given a hug to that stranger who was crying in the frozen-food section of the grocery story. I should have been more gracious, kind, loving. I should have been tougher and just said what needed to be said.
I should have just said it . . . all of these shoulds. No wonder I find that I am too hard on myself.
Surely, life is not entirely left to coincidence and fate. I have a part in this passion play, and it is my role to navigate past the shoulds that present themselves to me as I shift shouldinto will.I remember when I was going through a tough time of either-or in my life — one of those definitive crossroad moments — and my brother was encouraging me to shift into a new change. I was balking and reciting the many excuses as to why I could notdo anything to create something more positive in my life. I remember my brother’s question to me: “Can’t? Or won’t?”
Can’t? Or won’t? Should? Or will? The lyrics from an Indigo Girls song have been running through my mind as I have been writing this morning:
“There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.”
The closer I am to fine, the more likely I am to be more flexible. More fluid. More willing to be in flow-mode. There truly is more than one answer to the many questions that present. And a crooked line is sometimes to be expected.
Life has its many many blessings that are all around me. When I experience an active awareness of this, I feel my spirit bumping some of the ever-present shoulds into a different position, allowing me to enter that magical bubble of grace, easing me into an easier space.
This is one of life’s anointed experiences that is rarely stored in the memory for later recall during some of the more challenging times. And like the Biblical manna, this sort of moment is supplied miraculously on a daily basis. It is up to me to harvest it, to enjoy it, and to not try to store it or hoard it. It is a single moment to be released into and from my life. One at a time, preferably without an army of shoulds marching at the head of the procession.
In life, we are blessed when we can experience true sweetness. At the risk of sounding pessimistic, this can be quite rare. How many times will I try to not only acknowledge but to return this sweetness? Over and over. Like Thomas Edison and his 10,000 tries to invent the light bulb, I will.
I am listening to Robert Johnson tonight and wanted to share these songs with you.
I ask myself: What are some of my common shoulds? I sometimes think that I am too hard on myself. And there are those times when I am too quick to step aside and let fate and coincidence charge into each other.
The Unseen Words Project 