Hear Your Now
When I was young I felt a lot of sudden bursts of fill-me-up-completely feelings. Sometimes they were pure unbridled joy. Other times I felt the uncertainty and hopelessness I have always associated with a spacewalker whose cord to the mothership has been severed. Now twinges reside more often in my body. My lower back near my hip — a reminder of choosing the wrong type of sit-up for this body at this age. The inside of my knee — small residual pains leftover from a free fall down the last few steps of my old basement. These physical twinges serve as reminders to be physically present, to be in my life in whatever moment I am in, and to be open to what life offers to me in those moments.
If I had paid more attention I would not have ended up with these two particular twinges. I was rushing down the stairs. In the dark. I was more concerned with the result of the sit-ups than the sit-ups themselves. And yet. Not noticing can teach us to notice. For me not noticing is often the product of not committing to a particular action. Moving forward I want to fall in love with each of my choices as I make them. Maybe a choice will turn out to be a thief or a con artist, but it could also turn out to be a gift from the Universe. Our choices if we own them, if we commit to them, will always teach us. I strive to be in love with my choices until they prove to be actions that don’t belong to who I am now. Every action is like this. Think 80s hairstyles or lovers we chose when we were not yet in love with ourselves, or at least not yet understanding that we deserve to be loved.
Every choice whispers to us what it’s trying to teach us. Signs don’t force us to go in one direction or another. They simply make us aware of possibilities and sometimes of dangers or potential annoyances we might encounter. We may end up stuck in traffic or slow down the flow of our own growth as we rubberneck to watch other people’s lives. We gawk at their fancy car, wondering how they can possibly afford it. We can choose to drive by one way streets or to get off the bus and walk because it doesn’t stop where we want to go. We can take the slow scenic train or the bullet express that travels predominantly through tunnels in the dark. There is no wrong or right. There are only choices. We can opt out of attending a musical performance or a sporting event even if we spent a fortune on the ticket or feel obligated to get our money’s worth from a season’s subscription.
We can learn that commitment isn’t blind allegiance but a choice, and that the only way to walk in our own flow is to stop letting who we used to be, or who we are afraid we will never be, judge who we are now.
