challenge

What’s Up?

/ Kennedy Farr / 3 Comments

” . . . and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination . . .”

This is such a great song.  What is hope?  What does it mean?  What does it instill in our soul?  What does it provide in the ways of forward motion?

Do we equate success with hope . . . is success in some way proportional to hope?

After all, what is life without hope?

I remember talking with a friend whose girlfriend had experienced a critical and heartbreaking rock-climbing accident.  I remember not knowing exactly what to ask or to say to my friend, as his girlfriend was an Olympic-quality athlete and was enduring the painful realization that life would not be in any state of re-dial in the ways of movement and in the ways of time.

We talked and I asked how life was healing and evolving.  His response: “Well, where there is life, there is hope.”

I remember this conversation well.  It struck me that this was all there really was left to say in the aftermath of a life-changing tragedy.

I think of this song by the 4 Non Blondes and I realize that hope can feel like “that great big hill.”  We worry and we fret.  We despair and we want to give up.  We want to crawl into a shell.  We want to try something entirely different — even when it means walking away from an epic life-dream.

But hope tugs at us and gets us up in the morning.  We want time to stand still for even a fractional moment.  But it doesn’t.  It simply doesn’t.  There are days when the merry-go-round is moving too fast to factor Hope into its revolution but we still manage to catch a glimpse of something that spells b-e-t-t-e-r.

“And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What’s going on?”

So, we keep breathing and we tell ourselves that life can get better.  That different is not always bad.  That sometimes different opens new windows and doors that we could never have imagined as being so beautiful and loving and perfect.  That we worry too readily.  That there are days when we want to scream at the top of our lungs: “What’s going on?”  But there are also days when we say, “I never could have imagined this.  It is so perfect.”toaster oven

We make our plans and we project our timeline.  We map out our SMART goals and we think we know our destination, but we don’t.  Which is a blessing on the good days.  And a blessing on the bad days.  I remember being at a retreat and listening to a woman telling a group of us about the challenging things that had been taking place in her life.  She said that she had been feeling sorry for herself until she talked to someone who had challenged her in a big way.  This person asked her: “If you were in a large group of people and everyone were to put their biggest problem in a brown paper sack . . . would you be willing to reach into that sack and take on whatever problem that you pulled out of the sack?”

She posed the question to all of us at the retreat.  There was silence.  “Exactly,” this woman said.  “No one feels capable of taking on different.  We are all somehow amazingly prepared to deal with what it is we given to deal with.”

You can see why this story has stuck with me all these years.  I lost track of every artist from this retreat, but I still thank this woman for both sharing her heartbreaking situation AND for the healing challenge that she posed to all of us.

So when I ask myself or my loved ones or the Universe: “What’s going on?” . . .  I remember this story and “I take a deep breath and I get real high” and I move toward something that feeds my soul at the Table of Hope.

It sometimes takes courage to realize that I do not know “what’s going on,” but I want to opt for staying “high” and keeping my eye on “a destination.”

seed crack growth

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!