Tomorrow is Sept 1, Sept 2 is my 39th birthday. Somewhere along the way, this past decade, either someone told me or I decided on my own, that 38 would be a magical year for me. And it has been. It's the year that I began to figure out how I want to live, grieved, found my vulnerability, opened my heart. Began to require that my friendships give to me as much as I give to them, and have the grace then to receive it.
The look of my challenge changed this summer. I ran out if the energy to be so disciplined about everything - a true summer vacation. And now I'm tired of the lack of discipline, as summer's coming to a close. It's given me that chance to reflect on the challenge. When I started it back in January, I had no idea how to be happy on a day to day basis. I felt caught up in the same daily drama I saw all around me, in most of the people I know. So I'd chucked everything I'd been taught about how to live and cultivated instead the art of falling backwards. I made a list of all the advice the gurus had given (exercise, meditate, drink green tea, etc), and started to methodically live them. And it worked. Even as I struggled, I felt my life shifting.
This summer, though I haven't been blogging, I've been diving deeper into that idea. I haven't been exercising or meditating except when I've felt like it, but I've been doing other things. Rather than work from the outside in, which is what I did when I set up my challenge and through May, I began to work from the inside out. I let go of, gave away, and cut out. I challenged and accepted the response of what I'd been holding onto out of fear. I cleaned out my closet, my house, my garage. I let go of baby things, even though I've desperately wanted another. I told my father what I hoped for our relationship, and when he told me he was not going there and abruptly ended the conversation, I let go of that, too. I let go of what wasn't right in my finances, in my marriage, as a mother, as a sister, as a friend. I let go of my job, though I still work there some, I'm on my way out. I made room for the life that's mine to live, if I only dare to live it.
Of course, letting go and cutting out is an ongoing process, as is welcoming in what's possible. I chose someone whose ideas I want to pursue - Deepak Chopra - and made my number one priority discovering and living the life the universe intends for me. It's been the ultimate journey of faith. That's what's been so magical about my 38th year.
So in the coming months of my challenge, it will be about integrating the components of the challenge that serve me - exercising, meditating, eating right, etc, i.e. the things that make a daily discipline - in this bigger picture I've begun to see/create. It still comes with wrong turns. At the beginning of August, I'd cleared out so much but couldn't understand why I wasn't happier in my new plan. My new plan, it turned out, was just my old way of living in different clothes. I had to stop and connect with my bigger picture, and then the joy came in. That fast, that literally. I still have days where I'm out of sorts and spun out, but I see that those are the days where I've allowed myself to be turned around and cut off from my intentions.
There are things, my friend, that are required. You can't into shape without exercising, and you can't live your life in the same caught up merry go round and expect it to become the life you want. This coming month I'll be shaping the life I want. And we'll see what happens!
