I have to be honest...simply, I feel lost.
I find myself wandering in and out of what I should be doing with my life right now.
Oh oh, there’s that word ‘should’.
In an effort to feel connected and better, I listen to so many people telling me so many different things.
They say, ‘everything is as it’s meant to be.’
They say, ‘dig in and bring more love.’
They say, ‘be in the present moment because that really is all we have.’
They talk about people who have given money and helped.
They talk about people who gave money and have so much more to give but haven’t.
I think about how much money I can give.
I secretly hope to win the Publisher’s Clearing House jackpot so I could give so much more.
I think about what else I can give...much needed blood, my time, my Wisdom.
I think about my family, my boys, who even though are young adults, are still my children.
I think about my husband and how grateful I am to be wrapped in his kindness.
‘Compassionate action’ is a new buzzword that keeps surfacing from the speakers to whom I listen.
I pray asking for guidance to help me make the right decisions.
‘PLEASE guide me to be all that I am meant to be.’
‘PLEASE make it crystal clear so that I am of my brightest light possible in helping others...and even myself.’
What I DO know, is that LOVE IS the highest energy and that, LOVE ALWAYS prevails.
Of that I am certain.
And so perhaps the answer to my questions is to be more and more and more LOVE.
Perhaps I can give more LOVE to my family, to friends via a phone call, to strangers via a smile or a donation...now that feels like ‘compassionate action’ and certainly lights my heart.
Perhaps it is time to truly rest and, in that stillness, cultivate more my garden of gifts.
That is...things that make MY heart sing which might make others’ hearts sing too.
The people I listen to say, ‘we have the answers inside.’
They say, ‘we know what is right for us.’
And so, I ask of myself...’If time were to cross the finish line in the next week, or month, or year what is the one thing I want to leave behind?’
Again, I immediately think of my children.
I think of the recent moment I happened to be walking past an open daycare and saw a little boy sobbing...’I want my mommy.’
The sobs resonating in my own heart of the time when I too yearned for ‘my mommy’ and yearned for what was - before leaving my beloved home in Pennsylvania to come with my family to California due to my husband’s job.
For years I yearned for ‘what was’ which in itself broke my heart day in and day out.
I fell into a great depression not seeing all that I DID have around me and instead replayed the fond memories of the past, living there instead of here.
Jon Kabat-Zinn says it so wisely, ‘Wherever you go, there you are.’
It’s the title of one of his many books.
Seeing that title was as though a mirror was put in front of me and finally I said ‘hello’ to myself and my life. I said ‘hello’ to the very present moment, the now.
Waking up I realized it was up to me to find my own happiness because no one could do it for me.
And so, I learned about depression and ways to climb out of what I like to call the ‘black hole’.
Now I am grateful that I DID climb out and found my own heart and soul lifted in gratitude, in more love, in learning, in being, in Nature, in writing, in helping, in creating.
It was, and is, inside. ‘They’ were right.
‘Wherever you go, there you are,’ wrote Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Where are you?
Who are you?
What do you want to leave for the next generation, if anything?
Because here we all are...together.
Oh, and by the way, ‘World’ without ‘L’, or ‘LOVE’ is just ‘Word’.
