Recovering a Sense of Possibility

 "Look and you will find it.  What is unsought will go undetected." - Sophocles

Sometimes life gets busy.  Really, really busy.  Like this past week for me.  Hour upon hour of video editing.  (You'd be surprised how long it takes to make a 5-minute video.  Whew!)  And grandkids spending the night so I can get as much time with them as possible before they are moved away.  Hour by hour that leaving date so quickly approaches.  Sigh...

This past week was Week 5 of the Artist's Way, although with all that I was "accomplishing", I didn't spend all that much time "doing" the weekly tasks.  But I am learning to be kinder with myself, so it's ok if I miss a task here or there.  The objective is growth, not perfection, remember?  Yes, of course, I do.

However, I noticed something when I was attempting to do some of the tasks one night.  WISH LIST: AN EXERCISE.  I wish...fill in the blank.  I wish...fill in the blank.  I wish...my mind was blank.  Historically I was full of things I wanted to do and places I wanted to go.  "I want to ride an elephant.  I want to swim in the Mediterranean.  I want to go on a cruise.  See Mayan ruins.  Climb a mountain.  Dive Cozumel.  I want to create a YouTube Channel."  Those were my wants.  Those wants got me excited.  I did them.  I did them all.  Yay.  And I always had a list a mile long of more...wants.

But last week as I looked at the blank lines of that page, all I could feel was that I was sorely in want of wants.  Not because I have done everything that I have ever wanted to do on that mile long list, but because I was feeling a little bit depressed, maybe because of the kids leaving and being left here, surrounded by a hopeless, decaying sanctuary.  Maybe because I just quit caring about anything for a little bit.  A very little bit, but it made me take notice.

Week 5 was all about recovering a sense of possibility.  We were being asked to examine our "pay-offs" in remaining stuck.  We were asked to examine the cost of settling for "appearing good" instead of being authentic.  We were asked to consider radical change, no longer ruling out "growth" by making others the cause of our constrictions.  

The chapter starts off by Julia saying that "One of the chief barriers to accepting God's generosity is our limited notion of what we are in fact able to accomplish.  We may...hear a message - and then discount it as crazy or impossible."  We don't want to look like we are taking ourselves too seriously and we don't want to look like an idiot, chasing some wild idea.

But I say, this is our one wild and precious life (and Julia says it too), so we've got to try.  We can't be stingy with ourselves in the chasing dreams department.  We need to know that the gifts that await us won't run out.  What we are capable of receiving is beyond our imagination.  Make the list.  I want...fill in the blank.  I want...fill in the blank.  Then open your hand and receive it...or do it.  

Gifts are everywhere if we look, even in the leaving and the crumbling.  Good is there.  Hope is there.  Light and Love are there.  Beauty is there.  Just open your eyes.  Look.  You'll see.  I see.

I received a little gift of synchronicity today in one of the songs on my daily discovery playlist.  You may recall my recent post and the story of my dad telling me I'd always fail.  Well, I was 17 at the time of that happening.  A long time ago.  But today a song entitled 17 showed up on my playlist and a line in the chorus just hit me: "My mother said to me, don't stop imagining.  The day that you do is the day that you die."  

This idea, creativity as life energy, I will come back around to in a week or so when I write more about the sacral chakra, where creativity lies, but for now I will just touch on another week 5 exercise: FORBIDDEN JOYS.  Julia finishes off the chapter by saying that one of the favored tricks of blocked creatives is to say NO to ourselves.  "It is astonishing the number of small ways we discover to be mean and miserly with ourselves."  They (you, we) protest...NO we don't.  Do this exercise:  List 10 things you love and would love to do but are not allowed to do.  Now go do ONE.  Just one.

And know that when we ask, so many blessings await, which brings me to another song I just discovered today (music is definitely on my JOY list).  Blessings by Hollow Cove.  A beautiful, sweet, simple song.  And I watched the official video, and I had a revelation.  This weekend, I didn't slack off.  I actually lived a large part of my joy.  I sucked some marrow and swung on the playground.  I bundled up and wandered out into the world with one of my most precious loves.  

I am afraid to look the leaving in the face even though I know it will mean so many good and wonderful things for my son and his family.  And I am free.  I can travel.  There is technology.  I can video call.  And I am not the only one who is sad here.  It's hard.  But change is hard.  And it's ok.  Change is ok.  I only ever want the highest and best good for everyone in my life.  Because of love, this is how I choose to live.

And when my sadness subsides a little bit, I will make a new list, a mile long, of all the things I want to do.  All the places I want to go.  All the adventures I want to make.  And I will start doing them one, by one, by one, until I need to make a new list.  Until there is nothing left to explore.  

Skydiving.  Maybe not the first on the list, but definitely at the top!  Now onto Week 6, Recovering a Sense of Abundance.  Yes please.  Thank you.  Blessings.

"There is the risk you cannot afford to take, and there is the risk you cannot afford 

NOT to take."  

- Peter Drucker