Creating a meaningful life worth living

My thoughts continue to wander back to the March 8th event in Halifax for International Women’s Day. That idea of celebration – not of what we do/have done, not of who we are but of who we are capable of becoming.

Just who is that, anyway? I know for sure that we’ll never find out if we keep waiting for someone to show us the way. Waiting for an expert/mentor/guide/guru to turn the lights up and with sweeping gesture point the way. That’s like Columbus staying tied up at the docks, waiting for someone to hand him a map to the New World. What we need is one foot in front of the other, moving us forward. Whatever we find, it will be because we discovered it – not because it was found for us.

The pieces float around in my awareness: global warming; war; violence against women and children; poverty; starvation; ignorance; over population…and the list goes on. I am noticing that all of these represent as a growth industry. Growth in the sense that all of these are indeed, growing in both density and intensity. (No doubt, those who hold stocks in the industry of war are getting rich, indeed!) And growth in the sense that all of it exists as an invitation for us to discover the selves that we already are that are most capable of creating other than all of this! However, like we found our way to this plethora of devastation, so must we equally find our way to that of evolution by intention.

I can feel Gaia’s struggle to breathe in my own chest. Are we really separate? ‘As above, so below’. Are we, truly, each a microcosm of the whole? If so, then what we do to her, and to each other, we do to ourselves.

Wave by wave, shifting plates moving at increasing speeds, winds raging across oceans and wreaking havoc on the land that it meets…..these are evidence of Gaia taking it back. An organic presence engaging to return herself to her natural state of being – whatever it takes.

Perhaps it’s time for us to do the same. Perhaps it’s time for all of us (women and men) to take back our natural state of being – whatever it takes. Perhaps now, more than at any other point in history, we stand at the edge of our own potential. How many times have we been here?!?!?! How many times have we stood at the precipice and rather than take that leap into a greater expression of our selves; rather than launch ourselves forward into that potential, we have succumbed to our fear and pulled back….only to be swallowed up once again by our own mediocrity. When we are immense and we repeatedly refuse to claim it as so, our rage our at our own cowardice wreaks havoc on everything around us. As Pogo has said:”We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Taking it back. All of it. All of it! Taking back my right to breathe. Taking back my voice and my right to use it. Taking back my destiny and my capacity to shape it by myself, for myself.

Taking back my ability to tell rather than ask; to declare rather than negotiate. Taking back my willingness and ability to challenge rather than please, appease, placate and soothe.Taking it back. Being the one who decides whether I will or won't; and when I do, what it is that it will be. No longer waiting for someone else to do it for me, or show me the way, or tell me how long, how far and how fast. No longer willing to bow to a smarter one, or older one, or one that has more credentials. No longer willing to hold on to what has long been dead, even when we all pretend that it still has life.Moving on! No longer willing to stand still when my feet are itching to move; my legs are screaming for the long run; and my heart is pounding in my chest in the anticipation and excitement of that run! Not a race against anything or anyone, just a run for the joy of discovering how far and how fast I can!

Women, particularly, have waited a long time – patiently, politely – for the space to open up for them to be invited into. Maybe it’s time to create space rather than wait for the invitation; time to simply move ahead rather than wait for the traffic lights of our life to turn green; time for us to put one foot forward, notice where it lands, and move the next. No master plan – just the willingness to engage. Emerging future….

What women need most in our lives is ourselves. To show up for our own lives. To cease being the wallpaper in the lives of others… being that barely noticed, never intrusive backdrop on which the people in our lives play out their dreams and intentions. Maybe it’s time for our own dreams and intentions and, along with that, all that it entails.

In order for anything to change, we have to do it ourselves. We have to do it our own way. Not ‘the way’ that anyone comes up with but our own, unique, individual way. The way that comes to mind and lights each of us up. There is no master plan; no ideal way; no preferred approach. All that we have is that 60-seconds of authentic presence. And we already know how powerful that can be in our lives and in the lives of others.

Paradox presents as my good life, sitting in the midst of so many lives that are not so good. If I am a microcosm of the whole, can any of us be whole when so many of us are not? That is a strange thought for someone who does not hold herself as altruistic. I am far too practical for that and yet, those pieces won’t go away. Is there something instinctual… something tied to our survival as a species… that presses us into paying attention to such things? In this moment, I am reminded of yesterday’s blog of the continuum of individual to collective experience and how, in truth, it is all the same. The more important question becomes: does the individual experience awaken the collective or does the collective experience continue to inflict coma on the individual?

It may well be that women ARE the key to taking back a world that we are both willing and able to be a part of. As much as I wish someone else would do it; and as much as you may wish that for yourself, too, the bad news is that there is no collective without you and me. And that’s where it has to start.

Breathing is good…..