I don’t know if it’s because I am an avid, fairly serious runner, but the terrible events of Monday in Boston have reached in to my gut and yanked, pulled and jostled me. I am deeply sad. I am angry. I am consumed with a blankness of incomprehension. Searching through the reason of my intellect I cannot locate anything that makes sense. There is no seeming pay-off for this random act of terror. It stands without any philosophical undergirding or idea that might, even in its terrible wrongness, at the very least, give some sort of explanation to the standing query of “why?”
What happened Monday in Boston is simply and profoundly, ugly. It is meanness at its most sincere; literally ripping apart the lives and bodies of people gathered to run, cheer and challenge. For no apparent reason, life was harshly interrupted.
So yesterday when I received an urgent text from my husband that one of our 10 year old daughters needed me to take her to the doc, that she had had an accident, I reacted from the anger and sadness I felt about the Boston event. I was amped for a sudden, surprising happening that could change our life forever.
It didn’t. She had tripped and fell hard into a tree root that hurt her elbow. She will be fine (exhale). She will run again. She will laugh and she will be whole.
We will never know when those unexpected occurrences that change our life or end it, will be. We don’t know. It is out of our control. In that knowledge is total and complete Full-dom! Fullness of absolute freedom to live with outrageous passion, energy, and full-tilt for this thing we call life.
When my dad was sick and in his final weeks of life, we talked about the idea of living everyday as if it were your last. We laughed a little and scoffed more because we agreed that if we were to actually do that, we would disregard much of what we do and replace it with what we love and enjoy most. “If I were to live like it was my last day,” I had said, “I would never go into work again”.
But wait, maybe it’s not so silly. Looking back to that talk almost two years ago, I had been in a job I disliked that produced heaps of stress in a toxic environment. It was not a place that nurtured the fullness of my professional capacity and worse yet, it depleted me in every way. If it really was my last day living, no way would I keep working in that awful place. Even more, as I walked confidently out the door, I would have said what I thought without couching it in safe, inoffensive language.
That is what I ought to have done. It would have been the right, healthy decision. I didn’t do it because I had been caught up in the perceived sense of safety and the idea that my fullness, my good self, was defined by my work and career. I was unwilling to walk away from a position beneath my wisdom and capacity and move instead into my own, good, fully capable self because I was not living full of me. Instead I was filled up with societal expectations and the unstable voices of others who, in their lack of full living, sought to reduce me in mine.
Living full of yourself is trusting in you. It is taking the risk of listening to your good wisdom and experience, to your gut, your hopes and your needs more than any other.
The question, “If this were my last day, what would I be doing?” can serve as a Full-dom check: Am I living fully into who I honestly am and truly want to be? Am I filled up with my desires, loves and hopes? Am I using my full self to fill up the world with beauty, justice and joy? If the answer is yes, than celebrate! If there are any “no’s” than good, honest reflection is in order.
Knowing that any day could be our last, that life is unexpected and in reality, operates largely outside of our control, is a deep breathe of fresh, healing and invigorating air. It releases us to eschew all that holds us down and back in our lives. Actually, it nearly demands it.
“Stop!” truth says. “Stop spending this precious life being mean to yourself. Stop telling yourself “I can’t, I’m not enough”. Stop allowing voices of others to determine how you think about yourself. Stop giving in to expectations that are limiting to you. Stop yielding and get out there! Fly! Be Free! Stretch those arms wide and reach BIG! Reach for your full, big, unique self and fill up with the beauty of who you are and the truth that this world is here to explore, to love and to mend. Get those legs moving and run! Run into the fullness of possibility and do not take no for an answer.”
Life is yours to command, until it isn’t. And then, my darling lovely dear, it is too late. Now… today… it is not.
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