There was a gag I heard about someone dying (I know it’s morbid but stay with me) and no one wanted the person’s soul.  The issue wasn’t that this person was good or bad, but the fact that they couldn’t decide on where the person should go, Heaven or Hell (if you believe in that particular path) because the person didn’t really do anything with their lives—he was boring.  He tried arguing he was a good person because he adopted a dog rather than purchase from a breeder, and the Devil said you only adopted because you couldn’t afford to purchase from a breeder.  He said he did everything he was supposed to do and the gate keeper said, “That was the point.  You woke up, went to work, came home, and watched Netflix.  You didn’t DO anything.”  And that was what struck me–Many of us live our lives that way, where we confuse what we “should” be doing with what we are meant to be doing or the opportunity to do what we are meant to do.  We feel like distraction is the norm, numbing away what we want to do in life, like that is what people do so we should do it too.  We seek so much distraction it’s ridiculous because we fill our days with things we don’t want to do so any ability to numb out and forget where we are at for a while is taken.  When we end up doing nothing more than what we feel we are supposed to we aren’t honoring all we are capable of doing.

*Side note, it is perfectly acceptable to have an occasion or occasional day where we do exactly that or when we just sit on the couch doing nothing—we all need that break sometimes. But if we continually refuse to participate in our lives, specifically the creation of our lives, we will never witness that wonder and our life will pass us by—we are existing, not living.  In this gag, they call this person plain yogurt, a human rice cake.  They certainly haven’t drunk the Felix Felicis in their lives (see yesterday’s post).*

Now, there is a difference between experiencing life for genuine reasons versus settling for what we can get.  When we don’t live with ambition toward something other than ourselves, we end up in that distracted, melancholy, discontented state.  The reasons aren’t our own.  No one said we have to be selfish or anything like that and it isn’t about ego, it’s about fulfilling our purpose and taking up that mantle willingly.  So when we work a job we hate because we “have to” pay the bills and we don’t take the time to find a way to make ends meet doing what we love, we feel resentful and angry.  We aren’t living life according to our terms and we feel trapped.  When we settle and do things like adopt that puppy because we can’t afford what we want, we are saying that we don’t trust we can ever get what we want from the universe or that we aren’t willing to do the work to get what we want.  I’m not here to be critical of those who purchase dogs, but what I’m saying is that if we want something (ANY particular outcome) then we need to be honest about it and embrace it fully.

When we are honest and embrace life and we understand who we are and what our purpose is, things fall into place and align.  We aren’t living life like a square wheel.  Yes, that is one of my favorite metaphors because it is so fitting and perfect for what we try to accomplish.  The square wheel will in fact move forward, but it will take tremendous effort.  Embracing life is about cutting away the excess, the stone that hinders us from full range of motion.  One may argue the square is what keeps us whole, but sometimes we have to chip away the stone to see what’s underneath.  Once we gain momentum in our lives, we don’t have to be boring, we have freed ourselves to go anywhere.  In order to live, we must do something, and to live authentically we must do the work of finding that authenticity.  We must not be afraid to embrace the truth of who we are and to take action on it, not settle for what we get thinking we are living by doing the same thing every day that doesn’t actively take us somewhere.  While there isn’t anything wrong with plain yogurt or even rice cakes, we don’t want to spend our lives that way.  Be decisive, choose a path, commit.  The soul knows the way to go.