On the Brink, No Less

It has been nearly two months since my last post, and I apologize… yet, I don’t.  It seems I write more when I am less satisfied with my daily life.  I am quicker to express my knowledge and wisdom learned through dissatisfaction.  Yet, I learn just as much in my joy as I do in my pain.

I have been pushed and challenged and pulled and plucked over the last two months, but in the midst of my worst days I can still recall the moments of sheer joy at the fact that I was simply doing.  I am living.  I am so very much alive.  A fact that one might take for granted, but I try my hardest not to.  Life feels full.  It feels purposeful.   I feel extraordinarily blessed… and I will admit (for the first time openly) that I battle daily with a sense of unworthiness: “How can anyone end up so damn lucky as I am?”

I say ‘battle’ intentionally, because it is in fact a battle.  For anyone to accept the gifts that this life has to offer them is often a battle.  We are taught to give and not receive… and yet receiving is half the bargain.  We have to get to a place where we are willing to accept the abundance and vastness that is available to us, before we can come into our true sense of purpose and, thus, forward giving.  

To put it bluntly; I DO deserve to be happy and fulfilled and surrounded by love.  And so do you.

Almost precisely a year ago I set a goal sheet, and vision map for myself and the things I wanted in my life.  Many of the aspects felt like silly pipe-dreams at the time… but even just the dreaming of them distracted me from the disappointment I felt in my then-current life situation.

The other day I pulled those lists and maps out.  Almost every single one of the aspirations on that ‘wish list’ are fully fulfilled and nearly taken for granted in my current life situation.  I’ll be damned if I ever take this beautiful existence for granted again!

So now what?

Time to get a bigger vision!  Time to expand, and decide what next; what else do I want to receive from this life, and what else do I have to give?

Home has always been an extraordinary theme in my life.  I realize that I live, breathe, and work in “homes”.  ”Families” have shaped my life.  My career will always be unconventional and off the beaten path because I work in groups.  My family will always be top priority, my friend will always be more than just people I know, and above all I will always be searching for deeper meanings of this term “home”.

So now I feel my life moving toward a new sense of home.  In a way that startles me more than expected.  At a point, there has to be an understanding that you have to lose a little to gain a lot.  And although I am currently surrounded by more beautiful people than I can keep count of, I am gaining this awareness of life’s fleetingness.  Sadly poetic, I catch myself in moments having to remember that this wont be forever, because everything changes and grows.  Not to say that it isn’t wonderful and worth enjoying now… but life will change.  And grow.  Room must be made for new people, and room must be left for old friends to go the way they are meant to go.  Maybe not now, maybe not for 10 years… but those 10 year will feel like seconds when the time finally comes.

All to say, it’s good.  NOW is good.  Tomorrow will be better… but now is the only moment worth basking in, because now will be the memory that I might one day wish I’d cherished a little more.  

Home is not a place, but a human condition… and I am getting closer and closer to feeling truly Home.