“What if you assumed [the best in all situations]? Life in all its mess and chaos, is worth living? And you giving up now would mean missing those beautiful parts you were meant to experience?” Megs.tea.room.  Clearly this question of “What if” is prevalent for us at this time…or at least for me.  It does come at a time of intense and significant change in my life, personally and professionally.  The answer to this question will determine a lot. It will determine where I am taking the helm and the priorities I’m changing.  It’s easy to throw up our hands and let things fall apart when they seem that way.  It’s easy to believe that there is no meaning. It takes strength to trust that there is a reason we can’t see.  It takes strength to work off of faith and what feels right.  There are some beautiful things that come out of crappy situations.  There is the saying “No mud, no lotus,” from Tich Nhat Hahn.  He says this in reference to suffering, meaning we have to go through it to get the result we are looking for.  I also look at this in the regard of what if—we can catastrophize all we want and believe the chaos is irrelevant but we can also ask ourselves what if we get through this and it’s even better than we imagine.  Suffering is in the mind and, frankly, it’s a relative thing. Everyone’s suffering is different—what causes pain for one is joy for another. The things we define as suffering now can create some of the most beautiful circumstances.  It’s up to us to find the beauty.

No matter what happens in this world, it is always a result based on our interaction with the situation, whatever it may be.  Our perspective and experience determine how we interpret and react.  Even doing nothing, the nothing is a result of our inaction.  That inaction was a choice.  We can choose to see the dark, the mud, or we can choose to see the light, the lotus.  When we stop half-way through, we get nothing, we get stuck.  So, my familiar refrain comes again: this is about mindset.  This is about how we choose, what we see, how we feel, and what we act on.  Reality doesn’t just occur—it may seem like an ever-present thing that we just respond to like it’s a series of random events we have to get through. In actuality, the world responds to us.  We decide.  We create the chaos in our minds but we also find the way to clean it up and make sense of it.  And sometimes we have to create the chaos so we can filter through and find what really matters.  But it is always a result of how we respond to what if, how we respond to what needs to be done, and what we choose to pick up to answer in the first place.  The questions and scenarios we answer determine where we focus.  If we give up halfway through and get stuck in the mud, we will never fully bloom.  Yes, some days we have to push harder.  Some days we get rained on.  But there comes the day when we breathe.  We stretch.  We feel the warmth of the sun and we remember why we went through it: To experience the creative force of being.   

Don’t let what if’s determine what is.  I honestly don’t even remember where I saw this but I love it because it took one of my favorite questions into a new context.  This was used in the context of not allowing fear of the future to hold us back.  We talk about the power of the mind and creating reality and this is exactly what we need to think about.  I found it interesting because I saw the need for what if—I saw how “What if” started a different kind of chain reaction.  What if is the doorway to creativity and possibility—so many of the greatest ventures we see, hear about, and experience every day, the greatest advancements in technology and the things that make us comfortable, all of that started with a “What if?”.  If someone didn’t ask the question, we never would have the result.  We all know that What if is a broad question so we have to maintain awareness that there is a point where “what if” turns from possibility to prison if we put it in the wrong context.  So it is up to us to make sure we keep a positive what if.  If we answer “what if” with fear, then we create a reality filled with fear and we make decisions based on fear.  When we answer “what if” with excitement we introduce a reality that is open to possibility, not negativity.  So we need to ask ourselves the “What if,” we just need to make sure we answer the what if with the true desire/possibility we want to see rather than what we don’t. 

I wrote a piece a few weeks ago about the “What If Game.”  I find thinking of all the possibilities and reminding myself of the opportunities available a relief and a place to channel some creative energy.  Depending on what answers I come up with, there are some real possibilities there.  The truth is the possibilities are endless but it is up to us what we choose to respond with.  We spend so much time in our lives trying to get the right answer that we’ve lost sight that sometimes we just need to answer.  It isn’t about right or wrong—it’s about the reply and learning how to shift, how to respond to the new questions that form. It’s also about understanding that people will respond differently to the same question—and that’s ok.  We all have the “what if” that inspires us and we have the “What if” that terrifies us.  It’s part of human nature.  So if we are going to make a statement like “Don’t let what if determine what is” I think we need to be more specific in the context that we can’t let the fear of what if determine what is.  What if is our friend.  How we answer it is reflective of the result we get.  I want to let “what if” determine what is because when I stop asking that question, there is nothing more to find—and I know I certainly don’t have all the answers.  I want to know the possibilities in my life.  My answer to what if is the reality I see and receive.  If the result isn’t what I wanted, I know I need to find another answer. And there is always another answer.  What if I can come up with the greatest possibility I can imagine?  Make that the reality.

“A more compelling case for lying,” Alok Menon.  These words are an incredibly short snippet from a gorgeous piece Menon performed regarding the death of his grandfather who passed related to Alzheimer’s.  These words struck me from personal experience.  Thinking, is there ever really a reason to lie?  Is there ever a reason for us to create a false sense of reality in order to appease the actual reality?  It doesn’t change what’s happening.  But there is a point in life that I’ve witnessed multiple times now where the reality that is no longer matches the reality that plays in a persons mind.  I’m not talking about delusion or fear.  This is a circumstance where the brain can no longer support what is.  In the cases I’ve witnessed it has been the result of dementia and Alzheimer’s.  There is nothing more cruel to me than watching the mind deteriorate.  The person you know and love is physically there, present, but they aren’t.  So we find a way to meet them where they are and sometimes that means creating a different reality for a while—or at least meeting them in their reality.  The mind is an incredible machine and this is demonstrative of how we can control it 

We can go into all the medical reasons and physical changes that happen with diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s but there comes a point where, frankly, all of that is irrelevant.  No amount of understanding the physiological changes or the projected mental decline will ever truly prepare a person for experiencing the loss of someone who is still physically there.  What I found interesting in my experience with this is that there seems to be no pain in the person—the cases I witnessed were non-aggressive or fear based—just a near regression quality.  I wished I could go back with them at times.  I wished I could go back to the place they were and feel safe again.  For just as disorienting as it must be for them, it is for us too.  And I didn’t adapt well.  I fought the person they were becoming because it didn’t match my reality.  I didn’t want it to.  I wanted what I knew, never thinking that was what they wanted too.  The resistance I felt at meeting them where they were, constantly telling them we talked about this, served nothing.  It was me fighting the reality.  I was used to the quick loss, the unexpected loss—I never understood this lingering loss where they were still so very much alive and here but they were impossibly gone at the same time.

So when Menon shared his experience with his grandfather, it triggered something in me.  We all have to take up the mantle of our lives, of our family at some point.  We steer the course.  We direct our lives and while it is jarring to see those who were at the helm for so long fall away, we would all have to take that place at some point. My discomfort was a resistance to the changes I would have to go through as well as dealing with the loss of the person as I knew them.  Menon’s statement is indicative of a person ready to take the helm, to take over.  While not entirely sure of what comes next, they are still ready to accept their role and put aside their fears of the change for the comfort of someone they love.  The person they knew isn’t entirely there but they are willing to take up the same role that person served for them: helping transition.  We were lied to all the time and we got through.  Now we do the same.  We lie to live, to help them and ourselves get through.  Life is nothing but change and sometimes that means telling a story that doesn’t quite align for a time.  Because someday someone will tell us a story that doesn’t align as well.    

So now I wanted to get into what really spurred me to look into the Good Will Hunting quote last week.  I had some questions on my mind about a lot of things…Why do we settle for a picture, an image, an idea, when we can get to work and make those things a reality?  We can watch baking shows on TV all day long but we will never taste that cake.  We can see how long it takes to redo a home but we will never understand the level of work and pride that comes from building something on our own until we build it ourselves. I realized it’s cool to watch things happen and to appreciate talent, but it’s even better to actually experience life—whatever it may be.  So, here’s what happened:

I turned on the computer today and saw a picture of the northern lights in Iceland and immediately thought, “I want to go there someday.”  Immediately after that I thought, “I probably won’t go there but at least we have pictures of it so I can still see it.”  Shock hit me because I’ve rarely been that negative out of nowhere.  I mean, I have a strong negativity bias, but I honestly had just woken up and that was a bit early, even for me, to go down that kind of negative track.  That stopped me for a minute and I thought, I can go there if I want to.  I could go now if I wanted to.  The truth is this: no mater what, there is a way to see it and I am blessed to know it’s real and to have something like that to want to go see. Other people before wouldn’t have even been able to see it, ever.  They’d have been stuck where they are with no way to get there, possibly not even knowing a place like Iceland existed, and possibly heard tell of the magic of the lights and maybe they wouldn’t have even believed something like that could exist—or if they did believe, they could have thought that it was evil—angels and devils sometimes are a fine line.  Even as time went on and we started to get sketches and pictures, people still may not believe it.  Perhaps we’d get an inkling of desire to go see it, to see if it was real.  But the reality is this: We can’t assume we know what it’s like to see the Northern Lights in Iceland because we’ve seen a picture.  Nothing we ever do will let us know what it feels like to stand on that ground, feeling the breeze around our faces, breathing in that air, the feeling of immense yet comfortable smallness seeing the expanse of sky lit up in a way that makes you know something bigger is there, knowing that humanity is so much more fragile than we think and all the crap we do seems pretty insignificant at the end of the day.  There is something bigger. 

Humans are blessed in this day and age to have access to so much information.  It can be overwhelming and even challenging to discern what is real, but we have access to it and we have ways to verify it.  But there is no teacher like experience.  We are problem solvers at our core, we are inventors, developers, creators, collaborators, alchemists, magicians—and we now know how to make things happen.  We have a much larger scope to know what is possible.  If we have a calling to go see the Northern Lights, the Sistine Chapel, or any other of the amazing/unreal phenomenon of this world, we are able to do it.  There is always a way.  When I was younger, I was a bit reckless with my money (not unusual for early 20 somethings with a credit card).  I had a desire to travel, and in one year I’d gone to Las Vegas twice.  One of those trips was going to Hawaii and Vegas.  I can tell you it took me a really long time to pay off that trip, but I didn’t regret doing it.  There is nothing like experience.  I will always remember the feel of the water rushing up over my legs, the feel of the sand, sitting on Waikiki Beach, the feel of the sun on my back.  I’ll always remember the wild feeling of laying next to my then boyfriend in the hotel room bed after we had just made love.  Those are experiences that will always go beyond imagination.  That is life.  

In order to live life, we must live it.  There is no substitute for taking action on what we want and creating the life we have imagined in our minds from what we’ve seen on paper/TV/Social Media/online, and from what we’ve managed to put in our heads from desire.  We are infinitely more powerful than we could imagine.  The world is just waiting for us to harness that energy and make something of it.  We wouldn’t have these desires if we weren’t meant to do something with them.  It would be like capping the volcano, trying to hold in all of that power while it’s bubbling and brewing and building pressure.  But we don’t need to wait to explode to get the life we want.  And there is this: Just as we can’t build the life we want without actually living it, we can’t assume we understand anything on the level of another person who has gone through it—no matter what that is.  So if anything, remember how very lucky we are and how very fragile this life is.  Even with all of this power, we are still just a speck, a dot in space—perhaps so small we don’t even register as a dot.  But there are infinite depths in us just like there are to the universe, the seen and the unseen.  All of that insignificance doesn’t matter—it’s a reminder to take what we have and go live the life on the grandest scale we can.

Today I am grateful for confusion.  Ok, stick with me on this one.  Clarity is always the goal but we can’t always know all the answers.  Sometimes we have to take a shot and wing it.  Sometimes we go on gut instinct and we don’t always get it right.  I don’t truthfully like being confused, but I have finally discovered/admitted that there is a purpose for it.  So when we are confused it’s usually because we are trying to decide between multiple options/alternatives.  I want to express gratitude for the confusion because that means there ARE multiple options/alternatives.  Having options is a powerful thing.  And that means the universe is allowing us to make the choice.  Sure, it means that some things may not be available to us, but we have the ability to make that choice—and both options are fine.  There is no right and wrong.  See, that is what causes the confusion—the assignment of right and wrong to something.  I say again—there is no right and wrong, not when it comes to a life path.  I am also grateful for confusion because it helps me develop my skills in narrowing down possibilities and focusing in on what’s really important.  I mean, I used to love the idea of being a marine biologist, I was obsessed with it for years.  And then I realized something: I’m not really the strongest swimmer, most of what is in the ocean can eat me, and frankly I don’t like the smell of fish.  I just wanted to find a way to play with dolphins for a while.  Sure, switching paths was confusing at first because I’d attached so much of what I wanted to do to this marine biology idea—but that confusion helped me narrow down a bit more of what I liked and didn’t like and I understood that it wasn’t the career for me.  Similar events are happening now and I am confused about which way to go—but I can peel back the layers and see what is really important.

Today I am grateful for knowing the difference.  What difference you ask?  The fact that there is a difference between what feels right for us and what doesn’t.  For knowing when things that worked, no longer are. For knowing when things click and we are on the right path.  For knowing genuine interest and care versus an excuse waiting for their turn to talk.  For knowing when my real value is seen and when it isn’t—and for no longer tolerating when it isn’t.  For knowing when to keep quiet and when to speak up.  For knowing real love/care versus something fleeting….or mistaken for love.  For knowing when things just click and when they are forced.  For knowing my limits and when I’m trying too hard or pushing too hard.  For accepting where I am, not settling—there are things to enjoy (lots of them) that I appreciate about being here and with what I am doing with my life and there is more to do.  Now being on the right track, things fall into place easier.     

Today I am grateful for inclusion.  What I thought was inclusion before has revealed itself to be tolerance as long as I was giving in and doing that they other person wanted.  That is not only conditional, it’s manipulative.  It feels entirely different when your presence is wanted versus tolerated or only as needed.  There are parts of ourselves that we will only find if we say yes—yes to new people and experiences.  Similarly there are parts of ourselves that we will only find if we say no.  Sometimes we have to say no to the patterns we had, the responses we had to people, the emotional reaction toward behavior and we simply need to shift our behavior.  We need to not repeat patterns in order to establish better boundaries and a clear direction for ourselves. Frankly, the boundaries are to demonstrate respect for ourselves as well.  I will talk about the idea of adding more of what we love to our reality later in the week and I am understanding how important it is to say yes to what we love.  If we reject what we love and what feels right for us, we are telling the universe to give us something else….so why would we say no to what we want? And why would we say yes to what we don’t want?  So when it comes to inclusion we need to remember to make space and create inclusion for the things we love…and we need to go where we are included and we need to include what we love. 

Today I am grateful for ease.  I’m not talking about things being easy. I’m talking about approaching things with ease.  Like I said above, if it’s something we want in our lives, there is no need to be coy or say no or believe we have to earn it.  If we have tasks to do, it’s far easier to simply begin than it is to sulk about it and delay what can be done in a few short minutes—get rid of the emotion behind it and simply complete the task.  It’s easier to allow than it is to attempt to control every outcome every time.  I am grateful for ease because it has allowed me to appreciate and honor the work I’ve done.  There is no need to earn what my mind and body needs in the moment nor is there any need to earn the feeling of contentment and satisfaction from doing something we are (I am) proud of—no need to constantly prove that we are worthy of what we want.  Ease and allowing, not so much about temptation, but rather simultaneously accepting what we want in our lives with what IS in our lives.  Allow, accept, create, have fun.  Let whatever it is, be, let it come, and if the feeling is that we want it, simply say Yes. That’s all we have to do. The world will show us what we give it and I’m tired of requesting an uphill battle because I don’t feel worthy on some subconscious level.  It’s far easier to accept that we are inherently worthy than it is to unnecessarily create a challenge for ourselves. I’m thoroughly enjoying ease. 

Today I am grateful for life.  I’ve been doing a lot of planning lately.  Like really asking what I want in my life and what I want to allow and it has taken some moments of rage, love, exhaustion, excitement, a few cracks along the way and a rebuilding/reframing of a lot of things in my life.  And I am grateful for it.  The truth is we really don’t need a lot to survive in this world—we truly need very little. But when it comes to making a rich life (not a life filled with riches) it’s about the experiences we create.  We can’t life the same day over and over again and call it living.  We need variation, we need to try new things.  We need to remember simplicity and the joy of the occasional last minute yes.  We don’t need to stress over what we can’t control.  We need to embrace and move on because life is always moving.  There is always this long now and suddenly today becomes yesterday and then years have passed.  So we need to be incredibly aware and grateful of every moment that we are gifted whether it’s sitting in a home office with a cat curled on our laps while we type or saying yes to an impromptu dinner and game night with friends.  Sometimes life throws us some unexpected surprises and I’ve gotten caught in the spokes of those wheels quite often, wishing things were different.  But I’ve seen people change and fall apart and I’ve seen people able to walk away from that—and I’ve seen some who tried to make things be the way they were.  The ones who walked away fared much better than those stuck trying to bring back something that was past its time.  As we all know, life doesn’t always work out how we want it—but we need to remember that all of those facets, light and dark, ae all part of our lives and changing any one of them can change us.  Is it worth giving up the good to erase one part of the bad? I think most of us would say no.  I agree, so I am grateful for every second.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

SOME CRUDE LANGUAGE IN THIS ONE

There is an iconic monologue In Good Will Hunting is from the character of Sean (Robin Williams) and he says, “If I asked you about art you’d give me the skinny on every art book ever written.  Michelangelo. You know a lot about him.  Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the Pope, sexual orientation the whole works right?  But you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine chapel.  You’ve never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling.  If I asked you about women, you’d probably give me a syllabus of your favorites, maybe you’ve even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy…if I asked you about war you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right? Once more in to the breach, dear friends. But you’ve never been near one.  You’ve never held your best friends in your lap and watched him gasp his last breath, looking to you for help.  If I ask you about love you’d probably quote me a sonnet.  But you never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable, known someone could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on Earth, [someone] who could rescue you from the depths of hell.  And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever.  Through anything. Through cancer.  You wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hands because the doctors could see in your eyes because the terms “visiting hours” don’t apply to you.  You don’t know about real loss because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself.  I doubt you ever dared to love anyone that much….no one can possibly understand the depths of you, but you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting, and ripped my fucking life apart.  You’re an orphan right?  Do you think I would know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are because I read Oliver Twist?  Does that encapsulate you?”   

I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a more eloquent way to say that people aren’t defined by a single moment or thing in their lives.  We can’t take one facet of someone’s life/personality and use that to define who they are.  We can’t look at a single incident and assume we know how that person is—or WHO that person is—because of their behavior in one second.  We have to look at a sum total of our existence, our dreams, our actions, and we have to offer the same courtesy to others.  We are trained to make rash decisions and we so often go off of first impressions that we don’t take the time to find the story and nuance people have.  Everyone has a story. We each have our unique experiences that make us who we are, that give us enough perspective to see things from different angles.  And here is the other thing: even if we have been through a similar experience, that doesn’t mean we understand the entirety of someone else’s experience.  At the most basic level, this is the difference between understanding something conceptually versus experientially.  I will go into more detail tomorrow about what triggered this for me, but it all started with a picture and the thoughts I had about the picture.  Seeing something whether on TV or any media or in a book is not the same as touching it, being there, tasting the food, hearing the music live.  We can know something and then we KNOW something.   

With information (and misinformation) so readily available and with opinion touted as fact, everyone believes they’re an expert in everything.  We tend to think we understand the entirety of every complexity in the world because we can read about it.  We are even audacious enough to think we have the answers to things we haven’t personally been part of.  We think our opinion is needed for everything.  Watching a video on boating doesn’t make me a sailor.  And seeing a picture of me, seeing one thing I’ve built, seeing the messiness (or cleanliness) in one facet of my life is not the entirety of who I am.  The same is said for all of us here.  And to cover all bases, sometimes we need to accept that our opinion isn’t needed in every situation.  Sometimes we just need to be silent and take in the information.  We need to hold space for the experience of others.  Sure, it’s great to try and learn as much as we can about other people, about the things that interest us.  But we can’t assume that we will ever be on the same level as the people who have lived it or that we can know who people are because of one moment.  I can attest to that and I spoke about that later last year when it came to my first impressions of some people that I was very wrong about.  We must leave space, we must appreciate space, and we must give grace for life as it has shaped people and we must not be so arrogant as to think we know their life story from one single image.  That’s why we tell the whole story—because sometimes a thousand words from the picture aren’t enough.

I realized that I like the planning stages of things—I like the anticipation and the excitement of a new project.  I like the feeling of creating and developing ideas.  The execution is a different story. I find myself distracted and doing things that don’t help the initial cause so to speak.  When I complete something I’ve planned, I feel a sense of pride, yes, but I also feel a hollowness of like, what’s next?  A weird sensation of falling flat that doesn’t necessarily come from failure or things not turning out, it’s just when things are over, there is this natural come down that we all experience—a slight deflating feeling.  I love the excitement that comes from a vision forming and creating a plan to make it happen.  And I don’t know if I subconsciously like keeping myself in that state because I will find myself accepting more and more work and getting more and more behind in what I want to be doing and I never really start what I want to do.  Eventually I have such a full plate that I end up doing nothing.

That is the problem with being in a perpetual state of planning:  it doesn’t do anything.  It’s all talk and hype, and yes it feels amazing—but it isn’t resolving anything.  Sometimes the work is boring and I’ve looked at people with different careers and I’ve asked how to keep that initial excitement alive.  How do I learn to enjoy all parts of this sandwich?  I’ve written a piece about this before, but I want to reference it again: Brene Brown says that all things we undertake have a shit sandwich—nothing is all good.  So she says we need to figure out what shit sandwich we are willing to eat.  What are we comfortable taking the good AND the bad of?  What excites us even through the bad parts? When things get rough, are we still excited to keep going/eating?  It’s hard to face the let down of a set back when things don’t go as planned, and yes, it’s a bummer to come down at the finish of something.  But there is also a different high when something is executed how we envisioned it.

We can be planners and we can get excited over what we see.  But more than planners, talkers, reworking, whatever we want to call it, we need to be doers.  We have to go beyond where we are comfortable and see if our ideas hold water and we need to be ready to try again and do that over and over again until we get to the point we were looking for: the resolution.  I think this is an old habit, stemming from when I was a kid and didn’t know who I was.  I would plan what college I wanted to go to and then get afraid of something arbitrary—ultimately I was afraid I couldn’t take care of myself—and then I would retreat.  Then I’d get excited and plan again and retreat.  So the full exploration of self never really happened.  And that left me with the thrill of planning and thinking of things to create.  The follow through is where the meat is, however.  We can’t let old wounds and habits dictate where we are at and we aren’t meant to live in a constant state of pre-event high.  We eventually need to see things through, we need to decide who we are and follow through.

“’It could well be a trap.’  He wanted to scoff in her face and turn right around.  Let them find another way in, past the magic wards that surrounded it.  But then Sage stumbled.  He watched closely as she giggled and stumbled again, this time looking to the sky and shaking her head with a light smile, glowing.  Unafraid to laugh at herself, unafraid to look upon her missteps with anything but a brave sort of joy.  She took each moment of her life with a natural good humor, no matter how painful, no matter how tragic.  She trekked on with nothing but her will.  No magic to protect her.  Just faith and optimism and belief in her survival.  Being a cynic doesn’t make you wise.  It makes you a coward,” Hannah Nicole Maehrer, Apprentice to the Villain. First things first—I can’t tell you how much fun I have had reading this series by Maehrer.  This is book 2 and book 3 doesn’t come out until August and that feels cruel 😊.  Any-who.  Without giving too much background detail, this particular passage stood out to me beyond the humor of the book.  The content of the book has some dark topics, some truly painful moments of betrayal and real physical hurt.  But this character continues, no matter what, to see the good and the possibility in life.  She refuses to believe what people believe about themselves—she believes what she sees in them, what they have done.  The other part of this is not allowing the pain of the past dictate how we behave in the present.  She surrounds herself with some fairly vengeful people but understands they may do bad things for good reason.  That is enough for her.

Life can deal some pretty crappy hands sometimes and it doesn’t always feel good.  We have the choice to let it drown us, to constantly see the world watered down and hopeless.  We also have the choice to look up and find the good in every circumstance, to see the light the world offers even in the dark corners.  The character Sage has nothing to protect herself beyond her body but she still goes into the world and trusts she will be fine and can handle what comes her way.  The character of the Villain has magic to protect him but he was condemned for it and hurt for it so he took that power and refused to let anyone hurt him or anyone else again.  She took her gifts for what they are, never asking for more.  He took his gift and learned to use dark for good even if it gave him a bad name.  Here is the thing: perspective is all that matters.  For even kings hurt their people for the bottom line, claiming it is the name of the greater good when it is for their personal gain. Sometimes it is the one who stands against the crowd, the one who offers the truth no matter how ugly, no matter how dirty they get in the process.  Sometimes it is the things we fear that bring in the light.  In any case, how we view the situation and what we do with that information, how we act, how we view the world, the people around us with what we know—that is what matters.  The names people give us mean nothing, how we act means everything.

There are people who let the events of their lives bring them down—and in some cases, that is rightly so.  I mean, it would be expected to have a fairly sour outlook in those cases.  But there are people who no matter what comes their way, they seem to carry no weight on their shoulders.  They operate differently because they see the world differently.  Their training is to see the light no matter how dark.  The secret is that in having that view point, they often become the light.  Many people fear that and try to dim it.  But those are the people hiding behind their fear.  Those are the people hiding from the light because they fear they will either be exposed or see something they don’t want to see.  And that can be true.  But the truth, while painful in some aspects, is always exactly what it is.  There is no room for interpretation—it is nothing more than the facts.  It isn’t meant to be cruel, it is meant to level the playing field for all.  We can be joyful in difficult times, and in sad times.  We can take the challenges and see the good. But we don’t have to let the events of our lives define how we feel—even if we’ve felt that way a long time.  We can change that viewpoint.  The light isn’t meant to hurt us—it is meant to bring the truth to the surface for all to see.  We don’t always see the results or the full picture.  But we always have our faith and can choose to move forward with natural good humor no matter how painful, no matter how tragic.  Just have faith and optimism and belief in our survival as our character says.  Cynicism will break us because it makes us brittle not strong.  The ability to be hurt and remain soft is the mark of true strength.  Don’t hide behind it–move gently and with truth and the view of the world changes.

Today’s cards stuck out to me so let’s dive deeper.  The cards (from Gabby Bernstein and Micaela Ezra, the decks I use every day 😊) were: ‘I slow down and listen to the guidance that’s available to me; The moment I embrace my peace within and surrender the outcome is the moment that the universe can get to work; I am a lightworker in disguise, I don’t have to talk about it, I can just be it.’  I immediately wrote the following: Sometimes we just have to stop.  Stop talking, stop thinking, stop pretending, stop proving, stop controlling, stop being everything we are not, stop being who we are told to be.  Stop all the doing, being anywhere but where we are.  But we can’t do nothing.  When we stop, we must listen.  We must surrender all we know (or think we know) and allow the universe to guide and carry us to the point we can stand on our own completely in who we are. Only in our fully authenticity can we understand the freedom of allowing, because that is when we have allowed ourselves full communion with mind, body, soul, and source.  Lately we’ve been doing it all (I know it isn’t just me) and it all seems to lead nowhere, running against the current.  So today we slow, stop, and listen to guidance….surrender the doing in favor of hearing.  Who we are will become clear and we simply be. 

Sitting in silence, waiting, is one of the hardest things to do.  We are trained to do, to constantly move.  Our brain doesn’t understand not doing.  The body/soul/mind get the need for peace, but we are trained to ignore that.  We ignore what real peace is and what we do to find real peace.  I’ve always become frustrated with the people who reach out for advice and then do the exact opposite of what I’ve shared only to have to go back and do what I suggested in the first place.  So why do I do that with the universe?  If I’m told to relax, that what I’m working on isn’t where I should be focusing right now, why do I insist on pushing through?  Why when the inspiration hits, when I know I need to work on my projects do I deny myself that opportunity?  Do I do it because I love what I’m “supposed” to be doing?  No. I do it because I feel I have to do those things—people don’t understand what I’m trying to do so I prove myself with what I’m supposed to do.

There’s a message of inherent worth in here along with allowing.  We don’t need to prove anything, we don’t need to earn the right to be who we are.  That isn’t to say what we love isn’t work—no one gets through this life on a free ride—but it is to say that when we embrace all we are and we learn to listen to that guidance (and heed it) that work looks and feels different.  I’ve carved away significant portions of all the proving and the work I was doing in order to “earn” my time doing what I love and I have focused on these projects with abandon.  Yet, I am reminded every day how much further I have to go.  I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of diving into what it feels like to lose ourselves in the love of who we are, the work, the things, the being, the flow of who we are.  I’m still caught in the endless doing.  The only way we break that pattern is through full acceptance, clarity, and surrender—act on the advice/guidance we are given.  Even if it is scary and different than what we’re used to/what we would normally do, heed the advice like we would have given it to ourselves and see what happens.  Simply BE.