What is one dream scenario that you have lost sight of?
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Yesterday I was crossing the street, waiting for a break in traffic. A small, beat-up truck passed me — the very kind of truck I used to drive — and I saw a man driving with his dog riding shotgun. Remembering my one most-amazing-and-wondrous dog who rode shotgun with me in my old truck, I felt a pang of sweet memory pass through my very core.
This particular dog went everywhere with me, so it was a common sight to see the two of us toodling around the county with the windows rolled down while singing along to some tune on a cassette tape. The dog actually had a better singing voice than I did, but she was no critic. Happy were we who got to go everywhere together.
When I saw this man and his happy pup in that truck, a dart of awareness passed through me. It was one of those movie-montage moments where I could view time on film. I could see me and my furry friend driving here and there in the succession of broken-down trucks that I had the misfortune of owning.
Yesterday as I watched the truck go jouncing down the road, I realized that one of my essential criteria for living a happy life had somehow slipped through the cracks of my ever-shifting paradigms. At one time in my life, I would not even consider a job opportunity unless my dog could accompany me throughout the work day. I turned down jobs in Alaska, California, Canada . . .. If I couldn’t bring my faithful sidekick, I knew that the job wasn’t the right one for me. As chosen priorities lead to reality, I ended up opting to live in a wall tent on 572,000 acres in a wilderness area. It was a great situation where my boss did not care in the least if my dog tagged along.
The situation had all the potentiality of being lonely, but I never thought of it that way. I was living in the midst of all of this incredible grandeur and my dog was right there by my side. She was my true-blue, thick-and-thin companion in the middle of all that vast quiet. She would run ahead of me on the trail and defy any bear, cougar, coyote, or free-range horse to come anywhere near us. My time within all of that beauty there was such a rare opportunity, I appreciated every single day that passed.
All of this was bound to change. And it did. During my years there, this ace #1 dog-of-a-lifetime passed on to Dog Heaven and other canine companions joined me. Ultimately, a new job opportunity came up and I couldn’t pass it up. The only problem? I couldn’t bring my new dog to work with me. The schedule was pretty good and the two of us were still able to get out and roam the trails on our 3-day weekends . . . but there was a shift. And it was bigger than me not being able to bring my dog to work. It was me compromising on what was important to me.
Looking back, I can see that “Bringing My Dog to Work” served as a bullet point on my Higher Self’s mission statement.
The years have passed. That job led to another dog-restricted job. Then I returned to school, and we all know how major universities feel about dogs sitting outside classrooms waiting for their human. Not a good idea. The mornings were full of classroom time and the afternoons were taken up by various half-ass jobs that supported me through school.
Outdoor-dog time grew to be more limited for me and free-range hikes turned into long evening strolls through the neighborhood. Life had changed, as had I. It didn’t occur to me at the time that I was focused on Ahead instead of looking at Right Now.
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All of these compromises. With me feeling so buried by my decisions concerning education and future employment, the changes were all taking on priority status without me realizing that I was granting permission, one way or another, to something that was counter-intuitive to my internal mission statement. I don’t rightly know how it all happened. I don’t know when a yes became a no and a no became a yes. Life changed when I consciously reversed the two and said it was all for a Better Future.
That’s the problem with giving in and giving up . . . you don’t realize that it has all happened until it feels like it’s too late to do anything about it anymore. But that’s just it . . . it’s not too late. Not at all. All sorts of good decisions are before me. All I have to do is choose.
Life is a lively event. So many baby steps lead to where we are today. Today, I want to honor my preferences. Back up a little bit and review my Mission Statement. Do a little editing maybe and re-commit to what is still important. Invite my dream to ride shotgun with me again, roll down the windows, and belt out a tune.
How about you?
- What’s riding shotgun on your Mission Statement? On your personal manifesto?
- What’s one dream scenario that you have lost sight of?
- Is it still alive inside you?
- Are you ready to take some baby steps to renew it in your life?
We sometimes feel so bogged down by the progression of changes that have taken place in life that it can feel like it is impossible to reinstate one of our long-ago dreams.
Today might be the day that you sit down and ask what is important to you.
- Commit it all to paper.
- Keep the items approachable by using simple language. Dreams, written in your own language, will mean more to you than if they are crafted using lofty words and expressions.
- Put your manifesto where you can see it easily and daily. Maybe it is your bathroom mirror or it is the wall by your desk or on a kitchen cupboard. The important thing is that you make it visible.
- Read your manifesto aloud. It might feel weird the first few times you do this, but it is as important that you hear the words as it is seeing the words.
- When making decisions, think about what is important to you. Let your Higher Self guide you.
- Dreams are meant to be followed. Follow them. They know the way.
Author bio: Kennedy Farr’s passion for writing caught light at the age of four when she first learned how to spell her name at a yellow kitchen table on a sheet of lined tablet paper. Kennedy is a daily writer and blogger, a lifelong learner, and a true believer that something wonderful is happening right now in this very moment. Kennedy lives high on the mountainside of an emerald-green island in the Pacific Northwest.
Website: https://theunseenwordsproject.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/theunseenwords
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Unseen-Words-Project-1095815913825818/
Being a person who enjoys words and writing, I was hoping that some neat turn of phrase might bubble to the surface. Maybe something profound or appropriately witty or, even better, both. Something that would neatly sum up all of the many memorable events that have marked the calendar these past six months . . . experiences that stand as fence posts upon which I have strung the minutes, hours, and days.
It’s the first thing that came to mind and now, after re-reading my list of Top 9 Fence Posts, it makes sense. Looking Both Ways implies some sense of caution, like what our parents tell us before crossing a street: Look both ways!
Numbers.
There is simply so much cool stuff going on there. Quantity vs. quality. Count vs. noncount. We think of a life — a count noun — and we count the number of lives on the planet. But when we think of our our own life? We think “in terms of wholes that can’t be cut up into pieces.” It’s one whole life. It’s my life! And like grass, rice, and money . . . we don’t actually cut our own life up into pieces . . . even when we think in terms of annual events such as birthdays and anniversaries. It’s all one big whole that we truly prefer not to relegate to the Noun Category of Count. We want to make it count in the ways that are important . . . not in some grammatical or statistical way.
My advice to self: Just live and give it your best in the moment. You’ve got this. While I appreciate the concepts of mindfulness and how important it is to be aware and to be positive, there is more. There is life as a noncount noun. It’s okay to count the little things as long as I remember the bigger picture. And sometimes it is so hard to keep sight of this enormous, huge, ginormous Universe of which I am but a tiny speck.
Lest this become a lesson in the grammatical usage of gerunds and participles, I believe that there is more to this way of thinking: passion = noun –> verb. As in so many components of life and relationships, there is a heck of a lot of semantics attached to the way we speak, think, and act.
But I was so craving Different in my life. Better. More centered and mindful. I remembered reading that if you lay a wooden spoon across a pot of boiling pasta that it won’t over-boil. The pasta can boil merrily away with no more messy stove to clean up. So simple and easy . . . and it works! This Wooden Spoon trick reminded me that life need not be so overly complicated. Just try . . . and do . . . and lay the spoon across the pot. And try again. It is absolutely possible to turn a moment of my day into a gesture of mindfulness. I can make it happen. I will make it happen. I scrawled across the top of the wall-mounted white board in my office with my blue marker: You’ve got this! Try Something New! Today! I mean it!
You get the idea. I called an old friend 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 had been wanting to check out. I took photographs of garbage. I added kale to my morning smoothie. I had fun with some color and painted on canvas. And another new thing for me? I set aside judgment of “what is good” when I was done painting. I simply valued the experience and the time spent swirling color around.
I started reading my horoscope. I subscribed to a new-word-of-the-day website. I started blogging. I bought three tiny wooden tops, which are proving to create a really relaxing “stop point” during work and study time at my desk. I spin the tops and, while they are spinning, I do absolutely nothing. I learned that an absence of activity can feel pretty good.
Would you like to share in this challenge with me? Is there something new that you have been really wanting to do?
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