The Voice of Responsibility

Today I was doing our month end finances online. In order to continue with my transaction, the bank required that I click on "I accept responsibility" before I was allowed to continue. Key word is "accept" followed by "responsibility." It's a funny thing, that word "responsibility". It conjures up all kinds of things in our head. Maybe a little resistance or perhaps a sense of burden. It can also bring up feelings of empowerment and order. It wholly depends upon your emotional definition of the word. Each of us have our own emotional dictionary! It is something we should all become familiar with!!!

Responsibility, however, means simply our ability to respond to something of great importance in our life. It means to own the action we are about to take and be prepared for the results of that action. An immutable and fixed rule of the world we live in is that there is, in every instance, a reaction to every action. So, if you take "responsibility" for your life, it is simply an indicator of how much of your life you own. In a relationship, do you respond with love, kindness, patience and honesty? In finances, do you respond to your wealth, no matter how great or small it might be, with awareness? In responding to strangers, do you respond with patience and compassion? It is so easy to blame others or circumstances for our dilemmas. Yes, things do happen outside of our control. But even in those instances we can ably respond. In fact, how we get through those times is determined by just that.

I have decided to click on that virtual button every morning before I get out of bed. I think that by activating that idea, "I take responsibility" before I begin my day just might make a difference in the kind of day I have. If I do not make someone else responsible for me (making them able to respond for me), my choices might just be different. My life might just take more positive turns. I might, just might, wake up every day, feeling ready to take on this crazy unpredictable world. Like the Staples button "That was easy" maybe my "I take responsibility" button might just be the ticket to better days! It certainly makes my banking easier!!

The Voice

It's a funny thing, how insight comes to us. I am sure that most of it is redundant! After all, what has not been said or conveyed throughout the ages? In fact, my insight for today surprised me but it has probably been said many times. I think that insight and wisdom has many, many faces. The challenge is, it must come to us in a package that is personally recognizable, based upon our experiences, perceptions, and readiness. Most of us, being human, rarely take the time to break out of the hard shell that blinds us to these gifts. It is easier skipping over the boxes until one day, SURPRISE, we trip over the "present" and we get it! Our shell gets cracked and a little light comes through.

I was chatting with my niece, sharing news that we were headed to London soon to visit our son. She responded and said, how cool! My response to her was a surprise even to me...and I want to share it with you. What I said was "Our trip felt like a gift, but that everyday is a gift. We just need to learn how to unwrap the present!" In that moment, I became truly aware that what I write does not necessarily come from my intellect but instead is mostly, always inspired. To me, that inspiration comes from God. For me, this deeper, eternal wisdom is continually trying to speak not only to me but to each of us. Priceless packages await our attention every day. Most times, however, I don't think we even see them, let alone know how to open them.

Some are not necessarily pretty packages. We trip over them, we shove them into closets, we leave them on the side of the road. Those unlikely gifts are the hard ones. However, the grace of those ignored gifts is the patience they have while they wait for us! It is the book that sits on a shelf for years and then one day, you open it, and SURPRISE, you get it! Or it is the experience of losing a loved one, a job, or a home. These kind of gifts are hard to open and unless we can be very, very, very, very present with our moment, we will ignore the "present" until we are ready to open it. But as I said, the "present" patiently awaits us until we are ready. The inspiration I received today told me to open my present...not to wait. I think I will.

The Voice of Sanity

I was meditating this morning and this idea came to me...the idea of "sanity." I think that sanity, to some degree, is personal. Someone with prejudices defines it one way, someone of a particular passion, say an artist or an athlete, defines it another. As I thought about the idea of sanity, the word "sanitize" came to mind. The word "sane" comes from the Latin word "sanus" meaning healthy. To sanitize something is the act of making something clean which, logically, leads to health. It seems to me, if I can sanitize my thinking, my own phobias and fears may also be cleansed or neutralized. Any sense of victimization or paranoia also disappears. I am more powerful, centered, and calm.

The only path to sanity for me has been to first accept what is happening. It is to simply acknowledge that what IS, well, IS.  Byron Katie, a wonderful self-help guru wrote a beautiful book called, "Loving What Is" and theorizes that the only path to sanity is through acceptance. It does not necessarily mean that an action is not needed. In fact, if I understand her theory correctly, it requires a personal action of rethinking the situation that is making you "insane." "Sanitizing" your thinking means taking your thought about it, your opinion about it, and setting it aside by asking the question, "Is my thought about this particular event even true?" While it may or may not be true, its what you choose to do about it or label it at this point, that matters.

I have tasted sanity and I have tasted the opposite. One is sweet and calming and the other is bitter and destructive, not only to others but also to myself. The first is real and grounding, the second frame of mind assumes. Assumptions are most always "off target" and are rarely sane. Assumptions produce feelings of bitterness and resentment. Sanitizing my thoughts shows me a path, an answer, a possibility that I might have otherwise missed.  To sanitize my thoughts always brings me to a place of compassion for others and patience for myself. I wrote a poem in my youth that ended with, "I think I need to be bleached!" I had no idea how true that was at the time! The Tao Te Ching tells us that a master is someone who "learns to unlearn." Christ told us to remove the plank from our own eye instead of the sliver from another. Somewhere, in the wisdom of our prophets, they all prescribe the same thing. Sanitizing your thoughts is a small toll to pay if peace is the path you wish to travel upon.

The Voice of Sorrow

Today I was informed that a dear friend's daughter just lost her husband. My friend's daughter and her new husband were young, married this past summer. They had a wonderful future they had planned together and the newness of their love was still simmering and alive. As heartsick as I am, I cannot even imagine the sorrow his and my friend's families are feeling. Helplessness is the only word that comes to me, something we all encounter when faced with the unthinkable.

It is a hard thing to understand, why someone who is good and full of life, willing to give back to the world, is taken from us and others who might do harm are not. There is no answer for these things, no way to escape the helplessness and sometime random shocks that come with being alive. Having faced some of those shock waves in my own life's earthquakes, I can only say that in the end, sorrow will visit us all. Life does not provide an escape route from tragedy. It is only the manner in which we confide to ourselves, in that darkness what we say about the sorrow, that will add or take away from our life and even (to some extent) the life that was lost.

For me, this is a reminder to love the people in front of me. To cherish each and every moment shared with my husband, my children, my grandchildren...my sister and her family...and all the friends that have been gifted to me over the years. This is a reminder that I have today, this moment, that is mine. There is no, nor has there ever been, any guarantees for that next moment we all think will be there. Sometimes, the only peace that comes with tragedy is to accept it, for in acceptance we might all find (in time) comfort. Then in the warm wind of comfort, there is a chance for us to gather the flowers from the garden that was shared. I send my love and prayers to my friends, her daughter, and her husband's family. I send my love and prayers to everyone who has met sorrow. Tomorrow will come and this too shall pass. There is value in the words that a dear friend was given in her time of sorrow...sometimes it just take a lot of tears.

The Voice of Question

During the month of December my husband and I usually see more movies, especially following Christmas. One of the choices we made this year was to see "How Do You Know." It is the story about choosing and while it begins rather slowly, the movie develops into this very meaningful and touching story. I wrote about "knowing" recently. But while today's topic may seem related, it is different. How Do I Know...when I am trying to make a decision that sometimes becomes a life changing decision.

As I think on this theme for myself and how my life looks now, and as I reflect on some of my girlfriends facing similar conundrums regarding single life, I have come to my own conclusions. I am sure there is no simple formula for knowing the answer to this question. I am hoping that others who read this share their own road signs and markers. I think we can learn a great deal from each other. But, before I offer my own answer to this seemingly innocent question, I ask you: "How do YOU know when faced with a decision that seems ambiguous or difficult or somehow conflicted?

Questions spur more questions...so I ask myself, what does this question mean? For me to know the answer to "how do I know" comes only when I ask this important question:  "Will my choice work to bring peace to me, my family and to my world?" The answer may not necessarily insure the decision I make will be easy or less painful, it simply means that in time, peace will be born. It is has not been easy for me to always stop to reflect. But when I have been in distress, I have made some pretty boneheaded decisions that led to dead ends and...well...pain. But when I have taken the time and really, really considered what mattered, I have never made the wrong decision. In fact, the answer to "how do I know" becomes so blatantly clear, I have wondered why I didn't see it immediately! Sometimes, I have had to sit at the STOP sign awhile until I quieted my mind. But in the end, given time and reflection, the right road has always risen up to meet me.

The Voice of Know

I received the most wonderful gift this week, a picture from my past that I had never seen. It was a photograph of me and my mother, taken right before I left home...in an unscheduled kind of way. My departure was not planned. Choices I made created the space for change. As I looked at the picture, I understood now the consequences of that life changing decision. It changed the course of my life and my mother's dramatically. There was no way I could have known then what I know now. Youthful aspirations and naive hope was the vehicle that drove me to do as I did. I had a map that I thought I knew.

Knowing is a kind of double edged sword. There are things we can know for certain. The sun comes up everyday is one of those kinds of knowing. Then there is the kind of knowing that involves rules. If I drive on the left side of a busy freeway, I will probably die. Then there is the knowing of experience that says if I touch something hot I will get burned. Our life road map, our tribe, is another kind of  knowing. This kind of knowing is based upon our family or community. It is subjective and can be very limiting. It might say "this is where you came from and this is how your life will look." For some, the map is clear, set out on a north, south, east, west plain with specific directions. My map looked more like a map of London! I have been told that taxi drivers must take a four year course before being allowed to drive others around the city!

Knowing is a good thing. The knowing of experience and rules keeps us safe from harm and from ...hopefully...repeating stupid mistakes! (Unfortunately for me, I have lived with the needle stuck in the record at times.) But the knowing that keeps us limited or caught in an opinion of our past or ourselves can be harmful to our own personal evolution. I have often asked myself, "Who would I be if I decided to let go of my early childhood or my past?" I have allowed some of my perceptions and thoughts about those things keep me boxed in and trapped in a world I longed to escape from. I have found that the best kind of knowing is to know that you are Divine. Given permission, that Divinity will LIVE you, that Divinity will inspire and drive you. That Divinity is your oyster shell. I am learning to know that Divinity and I like that kind of knowing the best!