celebrate

Your Personality . . . & the Glory of the Choice

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Vision Board 058Your personality . . . what is it exactly?  Aside from the usual adjectives of fun or moody or sunny or temperamental or intense or Type A or laid back or . . . what exactly? What does it really mean to be assigned a personality type?

We’ve all pondered the big debate of Nature vs. Nurture . . . how the spark of life is blessed/cursed/or combination-therein by congenital behavior . . . or wait!  Is it actually shaped by environmental and emotional factors?  And then these is all of the vice-versa stuff that leads one to accept and embrace both and then not think much about it.

Fascinating research points to many interesting findings that help us to understand Who We Really Are, our emotional and social intelligence, and our perception of positive and negative influences.  Nature or Nurture?  It is an enormous question that no one can really answer with total authority.  Take the story of the two children — identical twins, actually — standing on the ocean shore.  They are enjoying themselves while the salt water is gently lapping at their toes.  Suddenly, a rogue wave washes over the top of them.  The same wave, the same temperature of water, the same element of surprise.  One of the twins starts to cry and scream and run from the water. The other twin splashes back at the wave while laughing.   While this story would neither withstand nor support the rigors of a research study focused on Nature vs. Nurture, I like it nonetheless.  It gives me pause: Why not laugh?  It’s a heck of a lot more fun than crying and screaming.

And in the midst of all of this wondering and debating and agreeing, I do believe that there is much to be said for the concept of timshel — the Hebrew word for thou mayest.

When I think on topics of this sort, my mind wanders back to a Time of Great Impressionability in my life, and I was reading John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.  What a book!  Well, “the story bit deeply into me,” and Lee’s treatise on timshel has stayed with me all of these curious years later — a testimony to the notion that life is one great impressionable moment after another.

It is my hope that sharing this gem of Steinbeck’s brilliance and wisdom will not act as any sort of spoiler.  The book is brilliant and one worth reading.  Like life, Steinbeck’s writing is intense and provocative and profound.  He writes the sort of story that stays with you throughout the years.  I thank Mr. Steinbeck for opening my eyes, my mind, my heart, my soul, and my sense of wonder to the notion of thou mayest: “the glory of the choice.”

Last week, I came across this quite lovely Personality Test online.  I normally don’t click on these tests, expecting some sort of hook to be set before you receive your “results,” but something prompted me to go ahead and try this one.  Before reading any further, go ahead and click on the link and visualize your responses to the prompts.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliapugachevsky/this-cube-personality-test-will-absolutely-blow-your-mind?utm_term=.onK9zJNbz&sub=4259074_8744597

All done?

What do you think?  How much of the explanation of your visuals did you feel was accurate?  At the very least, I felt that I was given a sideways glimpse into me — parts of me that are actually true that I generally don’t consciously associate with my “personality.”  I think about Steinbeck’s artistic weaving of timshel into East of Eden . . . and I am reminded that thou mayest carries with it a personal(-ity) responsibility of creative and paradigm-shifting mindfulness that requires daily cultivation, acknowledgement, and celebration on my part.

Personality assessment aside . . . overall, we need not be so hard on ourselves.  I think we sometimes embrace the opinions of  people — people who truly don’t know us — with far too much zeal, and we assign too much authority to the editorializing that is done by others.  We have a proclivity toward jumping into the sinkhole: a morass of self-blame, regret, and guilt that we assign to nature- and nurture-defining personality quirks . . . epic actions that play with our hearts and attempt to define how we choose to forge present moments into future goals and dreams.  Or . . . is this just my personality?

I used to have a quote taped up in every room of my house: Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen.  In the midst of one particularly Challenging Time, I was re-reading the quote, and I realized that I needed to make an edit.  I crossed out about to happen and scribbled in happening right now:

Always believe that something wonderful is happening right now.  

The current paradigm of Overwhelm in that moment screeched to a halt, and life felt like it took a gentler curve toward heart-healing and happiness.  When I realized that I had a choice to become someone new on the inside, my whole life shifted.  This epiphany didn’t segue into some neat and tidy story-book ending, but it did nudge me into a new place, such that I could get back into a timshel state of mind: “the glory of the choice.”

toaster ovenI leave you today with the prayer, the wish, the hope, and the thought that today is a good day for you.  A truly good day.  One of gratitude and filled with micro moments that tell you that Now is Now and life is evolving, constantly evolving, as something that is wonderful.  If this moment isn’t all that great, just wait for the next one.  It will be here before you know it — full of promise and full of timshel.  With some refining, life really can be borne from “the glory of the choice:  . . . keeping “the way open.”

Click on the highlighted link below to download today’s free journaling exercise.  Have fun journaling and putting a new spin on perceptions and keeping your way open!

The Glory of the Choice. A Different Spin. journaling prompt

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A reminder that gifts of beauty await when we keep our hearts open.  So lovely.

 

[P.S. Here is the real Spoiler Alert: To read a longer excerpt that discusses timshel in greater detail from East of Eden, click here.  If you are planning to read the book . . . do not click here.]

The Choice to Choose

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

IMG_0719I 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.

IMG_0739Still, 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. toaster oven

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!

Celebrate good times, come on!

 

 

 

What is that one thing?

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

What is that one thing —  that if you don’t do it everyday — you don’t feel quite right?

Running, playing music, hiking, taking pictures, gardening, speed skating, reading, playing water polo, geocaching, scrapbooking, quilting, rock climbing . . . What if no one had ever invented or discovered your passion?  Would you feel the gap?

It does seem that so many of the things that we love to do are derived from prior necessity. Someone had to learn to sew skins together to stay warm and someone else had to run to chase the herd or dodge enemies.  Someone wanted to climb cliffs to harvest eggs and someone else figured out a way to record stories with symbols in order to preserve them from disappearing.

So many of the things we love to do have a connection to the Mother of Invention.  And then I think about needlepoint or rock polishing or yarn bombing or collecting Beanie Babies or toy voyaging?  Could you live without Extreme Ironing?  Is ironing cloth while kayaking that one thing that you would just feel weird not doing every day?  This is not to diminish another’s passion — I celebrate creativity! . . . I just wonder about the evolution of the soul’s striving to express itself in modern times.  Viva la difference!  And bring the iron aboard, Matey!

We do, make, collect, expand, display, and learn.  My interests feel fairly global.  Nothing too over the top.  They are simple: Writing.  Painting with acrylics and junk jewelry and gauze.  Playing music.  Sharing with and laughing with my Sweetheart.  Dancing.  Researching the limbic system.  Going out for Happy Hour with friends.  Taking pictures with my new and awesome camera.  Walking my dog on the trail.  Pretty basic things, actually.  But I would feel really unsettled if I didn’t have these experiences in my life.  How much of what we do, we do because our soul just doesn’t feel right if we don’t do it?  Surely there is enough time in the days.  At least this is what I want to believe.

These questions came to mind as a result of a trip to the vacuum-cleaner-bag store — which also sells sewing machines and fabric.  The salesperson, Donna, was so enthusiastic about helping me, I asked her, “What is it you like about your job?”  Donna responded by saying, “I get to be around what I love.  I get to help people with their sewing projects and then I feel inspired.”  She went on to say that her husband had built a room onto their house so she would have a dedicated sewing room.  She  said, “If I didn’t sew every single day, I wouldn’t feel right.”

Wow.  I went in search of Type A vacuum bags and left with a good dose of inspiring enlightenment.  Her passion for sewing was so evident and inspiring.  I wondered to myself, “What is it that I wouldn’t feel right not doing every day?  What would I do without _________?”

It is a good question.  Since meeting Donna, I have been consciously investing time in those things that really make me happy.  Prioritizing that which I naturally love to experience.  I love dedicating Sunday afternoons reflecting and journaling with my two best-est friends.  I really miss dancing if I don’t go at least once a week.  Twice is better. Thrice is the trifecta for my week.  If I don’t get paint on my hands at least once a month, I get restless.  I can’t imagine not laughing with my Sweetheart when we are together.  If I don’t write every single day, I feel weird.

Surely, this is what Donna was talking about.  If we don’t answer to our own selves, than we aren’t going to feel connected to Self at the end of the day.  Like there is some unfinished business just wanting to be completed — something that spills over into the next day . . . and the next. Like some creativity that is wanting to be expressed in 3-D on canvas.  Those running shoes that want to commit some memory to pavement.  Some invention that is simply nagging to be discovered.  Some research that is demanding a question to be answered.

It is like hearing an added sixth chord on a piano.  Would someone, anyone (!), go and resolve the dissonance, please?  Suspense is greatly (!) appreciated in jazz and in life but do allow me to experience a classical resolve as well.  I love that feeling of returning home.

What is it that you so love to do, if you don’t pay it any heed, you don’t feel quite right?  What is preventing you from embracing it and having some fun with it?  I am beginning to suspect that we are born with a compass of passion — that instrument within that guides us to do that which feeds our souls.  I love playing music and when I don’t prioritize it, something is out of balance.  I seek the resetting of my inner compass that will point me back home to that place of consonance.

 

It’s Monday. Do you want to be happy?

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Happy-Monday-Are-you-happyIt’s Monday.  Yippee!  Are you happy?  No?  Do you want to be happy?  No?  Keep doing whatever you’re doing.  Pretty simple, right?  But if you aren’t happy and you want to be happy, change something.  Try something new.  Anything.

That change can be tiny and infinitesimal.  It can be a baby step in relation to the Universe.  But Change Something.  You will not regret it.

Why?  Because the influence of Change, like the weather, is akin to the microscopic disturbance of a butterfly wing. A simple flutter has the potential to determine if it is going to rain on your outdoor wedding day six weeks hence.  You never know.  Weather and life and Change all have a beautifully fickle nature about them.  Surprises abound.

While climate may depend on the broad and long and predictable haul, the weather is changeable.  Its fluctuations are hard to predict.  The weather can produce a different result in the immediate.

Your plans might change as a result of the weather.  You may decide that a picnic is not in your best interest if there is a 90% chance of rain.  But you never know.  There goes a rabble of butterflies winging by, and you are out the door with your picnic basket, trying to decide which beach to lunch at.

Thank goodness for the seemingly impetuous nature of butterflies.  While some may consider their flight to be a contribution to chaos, others may embrace the short term atmospheric changes as beautiful.  Predictable climate patterns may merge and alter the atmosphere’s balance, but the short term, day-to-day atmospheric changes are what we live in.   Climate is shaped by unseen global forces that create patterns — all of which are great to analyze, but chaotic disturbances affected by a butterfly migration are what add interest to another Monday.  Nature is a miracle, and I am going to roll with the butterfly-generated chaos every time. I’ll choose a miracle any time.

Are you happy?  I am.  I love Mondays.  Is there a pattern to the calendar and our work week?  Yes.  Do I want to abandon my post and join a kaleidoscope of gypsy butterflies that are winging by?  Most definitely.  Still, I am a bit of a homing pigeon, and I know where I want to light at journey’s end.  With my sweetheart and my loved ones while listening to the stories of their Mondays that are always so magnificent and interesting, even when they do not believe that they are.

I love Mondays.  Mondays: they re-define another shot at another week of happiness and bliss and appreciation.  How could we not love them?

Life.  Metamorphosis.  Change.  Growth.  Struggle.  Movement.  Hope.  Rebirth.  Flight.  Freedom.  Happy Monday.

 

 

Skipping in Place

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

I was thinking last night about how stuck we feel when we realize we are in a negative place.  Stuck like a needle in a skip on vinyl.  

We feel that there is no hope for forward movement, and we can hear the inevitability that it is we who are going to have to make the skip stop. Sometimes we hope that the scratch is sufficiently insignificant such that we can wait out the monotony . . . when all we need do is pick up the needle and move it to the next track.  I sometimes “kick myself” after realizing that I have invested time into something that is, in all actuality, cancelling out forward movement and quality of  life.  But maybe this is part of life’s learning, and I should be easier on myself.  

Regret is an emotion wasted.  It is the groove that is holding the skip in place.  By being present and freeing ourselves from being stuck, we are renewed with the energy that fuels our happiness in the present and our dreams for the future.  By taking action and removing that needle, we allow self-forgiveness for those What was I thinking? moments.  Time to move on.  Time to put on a new album and move to a new rhythm.unstuck-2

Life is brimming with gifts and treasures and happiness.  The discovery of this abundance is the best part of life for me, like opening a box that is filled with exactly my heart’s desire.  Perhaps bumping up against those not-so-positve places is not the villain after all . . . knowing that I have the strength and the courage to get up from my spot of stagnant acceptance, pick up the needle, place it on its holder, remove the album, pick a new album, reset the needle.  And enjoy.  Sigh.  It wasn’t that hard, truly.  Time to move on to a better-feeling place and dance to some new music.

Who knew that being brave could be so liberating?  Certainly not a unique concept for those who regularly beard the lion in the den before breakfast . . . but definitely something to consider when feeling stuck in a groove that shows no promise of movement.  Move the needle or change the vinyl.  Take a chance.  You never know what wonderful thing might happen.

Walking Tall (with a little dog)

/ Kennedy Farr / 1 Comment

My Try-Something-New today . . . walking tall.

Yesterday, I was held up in traffic.  It was a beautiful day, and I was rushing home from work to catch some evening sunshine.  Traffic started to back up, so I looked ahead and saw a very tall woman walking a very small dog at a crosswalk.  What caught my attention wasn’t that she was so tall and that the dog was so little.  It was that she was walking with great confidence and really good posture.  She was looking up.  She wasn’t rushing across the 5 lanes of traffic.  She was sauntering like she meant it, like she was paying attention.  And enjoying her stroll with her little pooch.

As traffic resumed, I thought about how poised she looked.  I have crossed in heavy traffic at crosswalks before, but I know I have done so almost apologetically — like the proverbial chicken crossing the road.  Like I am so sorry, People.  I know I am holding up traffic. I sometimes feel self-conscious.  My posture probably sucks.  Scurry scurry.  Probably my head is down, and I know that I am moving more quickly than I would if I were walking across a sunny cow field or strolling in the shade along a riverside trail.  The thought occurred: Why do I feel like such a nerd for holding up traffic? 

So, today . . . I was out walking my little dog.  I came to a crosswalk that connects the interurban trail.  I stood on the side of the busy street and  . . . the first car went blowing by.  Okay, I won’t take that personally.  The other drivers saw us, and we, my tiny and strange-looking dog and I, walked with vigor and buoyancy across the street.  Now, I am not a fraction of an inch over 5’4″ — but I felt taller.  On the inside, that is.  One driver even waved hello.  Maybe because my dog is such a weird mixture of genetics but then again maybe not.  Maybe she noticed that I was paying attention to her and not being all hurry-scurry.  We smiled at each other.  I finished crossing the street.  She drove off.

This action truly did not require any measure of courage.  To be clear, I am not paranoid about crossing the street!   But making a conscious shift in attitude is what caught my soul’s attention.  It caused me to wonder about all of those times I have felt apologetic for simply being human.  Like making a mistake at work or blurting something without thinking.  Like burning the birthday cake or backing into my neighbor’s parked car.  All of these ouch moments that only mean that I am human.

Paying attention means walking tall.  And walking tall means giving up on my apologetic default.  And giving up on my apologetic default means making small connections here and there.  It allows me to embrace that small part of myself that sometimes feels like a pain in the ass.  Maybe I am the only one who feels this way on occasion.  But there you have it.  I write this and take the risk so that it might speak to someone else who also hurries across the street.  Walk tall.

Wear who you are on the inside on the outside, too.  You are an ultra-cool person with so many experiences.  There is boldness in claiming who you are.  And rewards in looking up.   And gifts in walking tall.

It only takes one person to change your life: you, beautiful you

/ Kennedy Farr / 5 Comments

it only takes one personChange.  What does it mean?  When we change we transform something, someone, ourselves into something or someone different.

Whew.  This is quite the mouthful of limitless profundity.  Change, glorious change.  And it all starts with you.

Change is transformation.  It indicates movement and growth.  Spirals and pinwheels and vortices.  A maelstrom of tilt-a-swirl.  Sometimes, change means contributing beyond yourself.  Other times, change means discovering something really surprising about yourself.  We experience change when we laugh and when we cry. When we offer our seat to someone else on the bus.  When we say hello to the lone kite flyer in the park.  When we sell our house and try the nomadic life on for a time.  When we say yes to Adventure.  When we say no to Adventure.

No matter our perceptions of the moment, change takes us to where we are right now.

A question: Do you take change for granted?  I realize that it would be metacognitively implosive to cultivate enough mindfulness in order to keep track of all of the changes in your life, but what is your awareness of the many changes that take place in a week, a day, an hour, a snippet of a moment?  Am I paying attention to the changes in my universe?  Should I be writing them down?  Mapping them forward on life’s path?  Am I over-thinking all of this?     

One last question: Where do you want to go?  What small, sustainable change might you make today to take you where you want to go?

Wait, one last question: What is holding you back?  What is keeping you from making that change?  “It only takes one person to change your life ~ YOU.”  Have fun today appreciating the changes that you are creating and experiencing and fulfilling.

You are a beautiful person.

The Try-Something-New Challenge . . . want to join in?

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

old vintage clockIs there something that you have been wanting to learn?  To do?  To try just once to see what it would feel like?

Is the Fear of Failure holding you back?  Is a lack of resources holding you back?  Is there someone in your life who is telling you that you don’t focus and you never finish anything?  Is there a voice in your head that always gives you bad advice?  Don’t start.  You have so much to do around the house.  You have to get up early in the morning. You haven’t done laundry for a week.  The garage is a disaster.

Do you feel like you simply do not have enough time, precious time, to even think about starting something new?

The bad news:  You don’t have enough time.  The good news: You do have enough time.  You CHOOSE which news you want your inner soul to hear.

I kept delivering the bad news to my heart, my mind, my hands, my spirit.  Financial struggles, too many jobs, juggling household chores, burned out from work, distracted by pets.  All of this mindspeak was proving to be so exhausting to my Inner Spirit that I simply stopped trying to express any creativity.

Until lately.  I have undertaken a personal challenge: Try something new every single day.

In the beginning, this challenge verified the bad news –> it was something that felt overwhelmingly huge and impossible.  When am I going to have the time to try something new every single day?!  My days already feel like pasta in a pot of water — on constant boil and threatening to spill over onto the clean stove top at any given second.

But.  I read once that if you lay a wooden spoon across a pot of boiling  pasta that it won’t overboil.  No more messy stove to clean up.  So, I tried this trick and it works!  Pretty amazing and soooo simple, right?

This Try Something New Challenge to myself has proven to be that magical wooden spoon.  I not only have enough time to Try Something New, I have plenty of time.  I don’t understand the way that time has expanded, but it has.  The hard part was starting.  The easy part is enjoying the rewards.  It has been so. much. fun.

I originally intended on focusing on one single something new to try for the 30 days.  Develop some consistency and build some sense of habit by adding only one thing.  All sorts of ideas came to mind.  Play piano every single day.  Ride my scooter to work every single day.  Eat a healthy breakfast every single day.  Work out every single day.  Do one or all of these things every single day for 30 days.

But I found that this wasn’t working.  I couldn’t decide on one-single-something-new.  As I was casting about for that perfect one-single-something-new, I discovered that was working was trying something uniquely different every single day.  Examples?  I started piano lessons — and have been pretty disciplined regarding playing everyday.  I went dancing at a casino — great stories as a result of this adventure.  I broke out the new orange-and-white kitchen towels that had been preserved in their pristine state in my kitchen drawer — now brightening my kitchen and thoroughly broken in with the hues of red wine, carrot juice, and tomato sauce.  I introduced myself to a stranger — and we have since become acquaintances.

You get the idea.  I called an ex-boyfriend just to say hi.  I bought Swiss chard at the vegetable stand.  I wrote a long overdue letter.  I told someone about my current writing project.  I had dinner at a restaurant that I have been wanting to go to.  I took photographs of garbage.  I painted a Jackson-Pollack-inspired painting and then added all sorts of 3-D items.  I started reading my horoscope.  I started blogging.

So. Many. Fun. Things.  Now?  I make sure that I squeeze that Something New into my waking hours.  I have effected change.  The ripples have been spreading.  There have been some really fun and surprising and happy results by expressing some willingness to shake things up.

Would you like to share in this challenge with me?  Is there something new that you have been really wanting to do?

Please, leave a reply and post your One New Thing and share how it is changing your world.  We all would love to hear about it!

What is the natural order in your life?

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

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PROMPT: What is the natural order in your life?  

What is it that you do first before you think?  

What is that one thing that spontaneously drives you beyond having to stop, think, clarify, justify? Prioritize, verbalize, intellectualize, organize, strategize  . . . ?

What is that one thing that just pops into your mind?

Do you do this thing every day?  Once a week?  A month?  A year?  On Halloween?  On New Year’s Eve?  On your birthday?  Ever?  Never?  And if not ever, what is stopping you from doing it right now?

What is my natural order?  What is it that I do first before I even have to think about it?  It is exactly as Samuel Beckett has written: DANCE.  I love to dance.  I love to dance because when I do, time literally stops.  Any sense of time vaporizes, and I am caught in a moment of no-overthinking, no-planning.  I don’t think about my job, my current relationship, my to-do list, my chores, my student loans and other pressing bills.  I don’t think about having to set the alarm for the morning or needing to feed my kefir grains.  I don’t regret saying no to that someone who is always wanting me to over-commit to yes.  I don’t blame myself for making that mistake earlier in the day.  I give up the guilt that prevents me from experiencing my natural order.

I just dance.  I am no longer thinking and processing.  I am doing.  I am living my natural order.  When the music is really perfect for dancing, I have stayed out waaay too late on a work night.  I have returned to ex-boyfriends because the perfect song caught us on the dance floor together.  I once smoked a kretek after a night of dancing with a really Bad Boy.  [I feel so transparent confessing this!  If you knew me, you would know that this was a really out-there thing for me to do.]

Consequences of living your natural order?  Of course.  All of life has consequences.  What I do creates the experiences that form who I am.  But when I embrace my natural order, I am no longer a human doing; I have become a human being.  I want to be in my life.  I want to respond to my natural order.

What is the natural order of your life?  What is it that you do before you think?

Who is conducting your life’s tempo?

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

PROMPT: Is there someone or something in your life that is dictating your unique tempo?  A conductor who is in charge of the baton?  What is your tempo?

Tempo is the speed at which a passage of music is (or is intended to be) played at.  The notes, the dynamics, the tempo markings on the page direct us to celebrate not only the originality of the composer but his musical imagination of time and place as well.

The conductor provides the musicians with leadership in interpreting such originality and imagination.  I would imagine that it takes a lot of skill to feel the difference between hearing a passage played in a dignified largo or in the slightly slower and overlapping tempo of larghetto — and then convey such subtlety while waving a thin stick in the air.  Pretty tricky stuff.  After all, what would it be like if the horn section was playing a piece of music larghissimo and the strings were playing the same piece vivace at the same time?  What a muddle this would be.  The equivalent of fingernails scraping  the bottom of an aluminum bread pan.  Ouch.

Dissonance would occur.  Chaos would ensue.  The music would go splat.  We would all be wishing we had brought ear plugs.  The music would be distorted and not appreciated.  The composer would be thoroughly and unfairly dissed in a review.  Mahler, Debussy, Berlioz . . . they would all be understandably ticked — their masterpieces trounced.

But life is not a symphony on the page.  It is an organic composition that we are constantly composing and conducting.  What is the tempo of this moment?  Of today? What was the tempo of this past week?  Month?  Year?  How do I want to change things up?  Do I want to change things up?  For some of us, we want to add more presto to our lento.  Others of us, more adagio to our allegro.  There are those few I know who have discovered the secret of andante, just moving along at walking pace and taking in the view.

When it comes to life and its intricate and dynamic composition, who is conducting its tempo in your life?  When do you go with the flow of things for “the sake of”  and when do you fire the conductor and make your own fun?

Some days, I feel as if there are an inordinate amount of choices to make.   Jobs to quit and moves to make.  Adventures to invite and trips to take.  Dates to accept and relationships to end.  Boundaries to set or to release.  A small and puny voice inside whispers that it would be so easy to just hand over the baton and say, “Here.  Please.  Figure it out and then direct as you see best to interpret.”

But then the question begs to be asked: Who is truly in charge here?  Who did I inadvertently or intentionally or voluntarily appoint as my life’s conductor? And who is setting my tempo?  Do I I give the stick to some self-appointed authority or do I merrily swing the baton with the wild abandon that life’s music deserves?

Whew.  Some days even the harmony and stability of consonance  do not have the seductive power to sway me away from the transitional instability of dissonance.  There is something just so seductive about eradicating the tick-tock of the metronome and marking time up and down and all around.  Swing yer partner!  [True confession: I don’t know if I am embarrassed or proud to report that I was once meanly ostracized at a square dance for having too much frivolous fun while others were trying to dance squares to the beat.  Not my best night of dancing, to be sure, and I certainly did not feel compelled to return for more free lessons.  But I did learn a lot that night: sometimes “free” costs more than I can afford.  Sometimes more than I want to afford.]

So. Continue in your tempo and ignore the conductor.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  To the boyfriend who is trying to solve your life problems.  To the family member who knows what is best for you.  To the boss who thinks your creative ideas are a drain on his brain.  To the grumpy man at the square dance in the taco-shell hat and the snap-down checkered shirt with a lot of points.  To anyone who thinks that their perceptions of truth are the best match for you and your tempo.

Life is hoofing it by in prestissimo.   And there are times when I want to trade in my zen for yeehaw.  I want to break the baton over my knee, kick up my heels, and have a hoot, even when it is deemed inappropriate.  Yell “Huzzah” for no visible reasons.  Invent and claim my tempo.