This weekend I was posed the question, “What is the most meaningful and lasting difference you would like to have on those you care the most about?”
I wrote about living a Love-filled, Grace-driven life. I wrote about living fully, expecting nothing, holding loosely, living radically.
And then I really dropped in. I made it personal. I thought about my girls, who are 4 and 6 years old – their whole world ahead of them. What is the most meaningful and lasting difference I want to have on them? Tears filled my eyes, and the words flowed like warm honey on a summer day.
“I want my girls to know that they can live big. That the sky is the limit and there’s no paint-by-number canvas, or formula, or box to check that says you’ve accomplished something…anything. That says you have to do something “this way.” You don’t have to get married, or be straight, or gay, or coupled, or single, or stay married, or get a job, or stay in the United States, or or go to an office, or have children, or be aligned with a particular set of beliefs, or be stuck because of someone else’s decision or expectation. You just get to fly, my little Loves.”
I really want this. For them. For me. For you. Freedom, and not from the place of being a selfish asshole who just crushes people in their wake, but from the Love-filled, Grace-driven place of intention. That what works for me doesn’t have to work for you, and it all gets to be okay. Wait – more than okay – it’s you living life the way that you feel most called to live it. Who else do we get to live for? At the end of my life do I want to look back and feel good because I was a pretty decent people pleaser? Or do I want to look back and cry tears of gratitude because I walked into the fiery furnace with Mama Grace every day, surrendering to my highest self?
Stepping into this space feels scary to the mind. Trying to find the answers for what the world might judge. But we truly only get this one life – this one incarnation – this one chance to live our best life. This incarnation is all we know. If you are desperate to help the people in the world who are suffering, then get busy tending to your own suffering so that you can tend to the world’s. If you are desperate to inspire others to find their strengths, then find your strengths, live them well, and tend to the world’s uncovering of their strengths. If you want others to live fully, authentically, on their growing edge – then you better damn well be living that way, if you ever want to inspire someone else to live that way.
I am choosing life with this intention. With rabid intensity. It may look reckless and crazy. But if this is what I want for my girls, then I get to be an example for them.
I can’t live for someone else.
Neither can you.
Rooting and Rising 