As much as I love a good celebration, the approaching of this birthday has left me feeling a little flat. The adding of another digit is quite frankly not as fun as it used to seem. I know that it is spiritually incorrect to equate any part of who I am with age and the aging process, and yet this birthday leaves me feeling a wee bit like a scowl. Not a hard scowl per se, but more like a scowl that is softening and easing if not immediately into a smile, at least into a neutral glance. I ponder the senseless inquiry “how did this happen?” How did fifty three years accrue so rapidly? Yes, I know. One year at a time. One month, one day, one moment by moment parade of minutes and then here I am. I find myself wishing I had paid more attention. I am sorry I missed knowing it would be the last time I leapt easily from a chair. I grieve not having noticed the final fluid ascending of that now daunting flight of stairs. When was it that the printing on menus began to play hide and seek with my now spectacled eyes? And oh, to just once more fasten my trousers without the need of inhaling myself into hyper-ventilation. I miss my flattened stomach almost as much as I miss a full crown of hair. And so it goes. The trickling away of year by year and moment by moment life experiences in retrospect seems a raging river. And yet the gift among all these less than preferential changes is: I am paying attention now. I am paying close and intimate attention. I am acutely noticing it all. And that is worth the aches and scowls and bulges and burps and thinning hair and bespectacled eyes. Yes, it is surely worth it all.
I officiated at a memorial this week-end for a man very near my age. As a part of the observance, I asked those in attendance to consider these questions: “If you knew that you had one hour left to live, and could make only one phone call- who would you call, and what would you say? And most importantly, WHY ARE YOU WAITING?
And as I enter into my fifty-fourth year upon this glorious planet, this will be a guiding question for me, an inquiry that will open my heart and inspire my actions: WHY AM I WAITING? As I feel into the still youthful yearnings to live more fully and to love more freely, what conditioning leaves me thinking that something must change in order for me to live and to give open as love right here and right now? How does past programming plug me into pullback, and where do my self-imposed limitations leave me locked in the hell of withholding? What do I think I have to improve about myself before I can give myself fully to my life, and to those around me? Do I really have to earn the right to live and to love with wild abandon? I think not. There are no dues to be paid, and even if there were, I have most certainly done my time. I have been around the block so many times I already know every pitfall. Now it is time to take a different route.
I will no longer hide for fear of exposure. I will no longer wait for a sign of acceptance before I choose to give it my all. I will not relinquish my inner-power to people who confuse me with their own rejected unconscious. I will choose to love beyond any reaction that love may evoke. I choose to move beyond past wounds, and to share my present heart. I choose to show up fully in my moments, and to taste deeply of their content. I choose to feel the aliveness of this one life, and to shove nothing away in the name of comfort. I choose to be Source-defined and Self-referred. I choose to notice and to welcome all the changes of my life, trusting that they each have a perfect place in my unfoldment.
And most of all, I choose choice. And that is for me the pinnacle of human graces; the ability to choose one’s internal response. It took a lot of birthdays and so much gripping resistance to get to that glorious and miraculous gift; the ability to choose how I inner-relate to my self and to my world. I get to choose that now. There is no more waiting. This is the year to give beyond what I have ever given before. This is the year to risk it all in the name of love. This is the year to face fully the fears, and to give myself openly anyway. This is the year where my purpose and my passion propel me into greater levels of service and of inspired legacy. And the legacy that I shall leave will be the demonstration that Love can transcend any past, and that Presence can transform any limitation. There is no more waiting to love. The time for me is now. The choice for me is love.
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