risk

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?

If you were to take at least one chance, what would it be?

/ Kennedy Farr / 4 Comments

PROMPT: If you were to take at least one chance, what would it be?  What would you do?  Take at least one. Chance.

I feel so convicted.  So very convicted.   To the core of my very innards.  Is it simply butterflies that I am feeling?  Is it a massive infiltration of pure fear being infused into my molecules?  Is it a state of confusion that I am experiencing because I cannot answer this question with a single, spontaneous response?

Should it be a single, spontaneous response?  Is this “chance” supposed to look like a pop of color on a canvas or is it part of a plan — all mapped out with color-coded push pins on my vision board?  Am I the only one who feels this way when asked this question? Please, someone. Anyone.

Wait.  There is only one question here.  Only one.  I catch myself wanting to answer in outline form in my Thinking Pad.   I want to get out my Green Trails map and examine the topography of the trail ahead of me.  I want to know how many miles it is to the overlook.  I want to know the point where the trail flattens out a bit.  How many switchbacks are on this trail?  And what is the elevation gain?  Have I brought enough water?  Did I bring enough sustenance?  Wait, is my boot starting to rub a blister?

I write this and know how terribly apprehensive I sound.  I love being alive and having fun and dancing and doing crazy things with friends and meeting new people and learning new music and traveling alone and learning new skills and . . .

A moment of clarity tells me that I am turning all of this into a gale-force force-field analysis.  It is true, in a desire to cultivate mindfulness, that I like to focus on what matters to me: Do I focus on the summit? The next switchback?  The trillium and skunk cabbage along the trail?  And how many switchbacks are on this trail?  What is the elevation gain?  If I knew that there were going to be 49 switchbacks with a 4000-foot elevation gain, would I be tempted to turn around and find an alternative route?  An alternative peak altogether?

Does life really need to be analyzed and dissected, answer by answer, or is it a journey that involves choices that are made one small, sustainable,sometimes risky step at at time?  I think of the time when I hiked up some crazy-steep trail in the French Alps.  It was an epic effort but so satisfying to reach the top. As for taking one chance today?  I’ve got this.  Easy.

Back to the question:

If you were to take at least one chance, what would it be?   

My answer: Yes.  Yes to the summit, the switchbacks, the skunk cabbage, the blisters.  I am going to look to the summit and hang the switchbacks.  I’ll pick huckleberries and identify flowers that are new to me.  I know what it is I want.  I have a vision.  I can see it and I can smell it and I can feel how good it feels to be on the path.  And I want it.  I want to take that chance now, please.

 

 

 

Contagious Happiness: What makes you so happy that when others look at you they become happy, too?

/ Kennedy Farr / 7 Comments

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PROMPT: What makes you so happy that when others look at you they become happy, too?

Is there something in your life that simply makes you feel sooooo happy?  What is it?

Is it a person?  A place?  A thing?  An activity?

Are you alone?  With someone else?  In a crowd?

Why is it so contagious that it creates happiness in another?

Take some time today and think on that “thing.”  Imagine yourself being that happiness.  What does it look like?  Let your memory of that “thing” inspire some fun writing today.

When I read this question, I immediately think of an activity: dancing.  Dance, dance, dance . . . there is never enough time in the busy weekend to get enough dancing in.  I am not thinking of the kind of dancing that you do for the security cameras at work or the mellow swaying-back-and-forth kind that you do listening to reggae at the bar.  It isn’t the kind of dancing that you do when no one else is watching.  Although it can be a lot of fun to reallyreally shake it at home when no one truly is watching, this is not enough for me.  Moving like an awkward and untrained Footloose Flash Dancer makes my dog actually look quite worried about my sanity and the future filling of his dog dish – if I am permitted to do some anthropomorphizing here.

The kind of dancing I am talking about is The Dance of Connection.  While tango dancers will tell you that they have the edge on Connecting on the dance floor, I can honestly say that shaking my booty to some hardcore funk at a bikers’ bar will allow for tango-quality connecting.  I mean, come on.  When was the last time that you did the Bump with someone who actually remembers how to do it?  This is a rare moment.  I had the good fortune to engage in this style of dancing a few weekends ago at a local roadhouse. I looked the fool but had so much fun while in that very moment.  That spot of time that stood still while connecting with something mysterious that can only be described as ridiculous happiness.

And if I were to analyze and dissect and replay my dancing that night, it might be a stretch to say that it made others happy to see it . . . other than that it might have made them happy that they weren’t dancing with me as their partner.  Such things in life involve great risk.  A sense of failure could ensue.  I could be bumped smack into the brass section.  I could be banished into the Field of Wallflowers for the rest of the night. I might have the best time dancing ever.

Baby steps of Risk.  Sometimes this is enough.  Sometimes Risk doesn’t require me to jump out of a plane or tip over backward onto the floor in a game of Limbo.   PowerFun in the moment calls upon me to be open and receptive and not concerned if no one thinks that I am a good enough candidate for Dancing with the Stars.  Shaking it and laughing while I am doing it, it’s enough.  More than enough.  It is the Moment.  So simple yet so powerful a connection in Life’s Dance.

So . . . a prompt for you: What makes you so happy that when others look at you they become happy, too?  Please, do share your Happy with the rest of us.