Fun or Fear?

I woke up this morning with adventures on my mind. Unfortunately I have chores to do so taking a ride to the landfill, and then on to my storage unit, is as close as I’m going to get to taking a road trip!

Do you like road trips? Where do you like to go? Are you a solo driver or do you like to bring friends along? Did you know there are people who DON’T like road trips unless every detail is planned out ahead of time? I found this out the hard way.

One of the things I love to do is just take off on a road I’ve never been on before. Sometimes it’s a road I’ve passed many times and wondered what was at the other end, but sometimes it’s one I’ve been on already and just really love.  When my son was growing up we’d often play the game of “left, right, forward” and I’d let him choose the direction we went. This made it fun for me because even though I knew where we’d end up, I didn’t know where he’d take us. I guess I just love the surprise. It was a great way to show him that he can trust his decisions too because even if we hit a dead end, we could just turn around and try another road. What a great metaphor for a successful life! My son is fearless when it comes to driving and recently made his first solo cross country trip at the age of 19. He’s fearless in life as well and started his own videography business when he was 17. He knows, without a doubt, that if he tries something and hits a dead end, the ride isn’t over, it’s just time to choose another road.

Back to that lesson I learned…So, I was 21, driving around somewhere in the redwoods near Duncan’s Mills in Sonoma County. My fiancé was in the passenger seat and he seemed to be on board with the driving around thing, but also kept asking me if I had a map. Of course I had a map, but of course I wasn’t going to use it…where’s the adventure in that??? What I kept missing was his mounting agitation as I’d go from a fork in the road leading down a mountainous rocky road, to a mossy lane climbing to a mountaintop with glorious views from here to the end of the world.

Then he screamed, “STOP!! I’m getting out of the car!” and I knew he was serious. He really did get out, he was flailing his arms and stomping his feet (literally, I swear) and said he wouldn’t get back in until I told him where we were and proved we could get home.

Of course I knew where we were! Geez.  We were somewhere between the Pacific Ocean, the Russian River, and Highway 101. I mean, we were wandering, we weren’t freaking lost! It’s not like we were on another planet, or like our planet had edges we could fall off of.

I learned a couple of valuable lessons that day, and since then have encountered other people who are afraid of getting lost. I can’t imagine how many things they’ve missed out on in their lives because of this fear. It’s probably kept them safe a number of times too, but oh, how many adventures I’d have missed had my defining force been the fear of being lost!

I rarely let fear win over fun. There was one time, and it had to do with a shark, in Guam, but that’s a tale for another day.

Do you remember a time when you said no to an adventure and wish you’d said yes? Is there something you wonder or dream about but are afraid to try? What’s the worst that could happen? You could die? That’s a valid reason for choosing to say no. Just remember though, just because you’re breathing doesn’t mean you’re living.

LOVE YOU!!! Just for today, do one little thing you’re afraid to do. If you can’t do it, at least think about it and smile because you’re alive J

Corey

Waking up to the Dream

To all the harsh people and dashers of dreams: You lose. 

When I was cold I allowed you to cover me with your blanket of foreboding and woe, slipping into a trance where what you had to say about me and the ways of the world were true. I fell asleep, pricked by the poison you’d tempted me with, and I lay there dreaming I was awake and wondering how I’d forgotten the rules to my own game.

You should have left well enough alone, you wrinkled and warped trolls and creatures of the dark. You got greedy when you felt my sadness and loss, closing in for the kill without your usual finesse for deception, forgetting that chaos is where I find form. You might have won had you maintained the slow and steady degradation of my soul, for I was beginning to believe I’d gone mad. 

But you stepped it up, going for my jugular because you thought I’d been beaten down when all I was doing was pausing to catch my breath. You forget this isn’t my first enchanted forest, or you my first monsters.  

Chaos is my friend. I understand it. I find the form in it. All great dreams are born from chaos. You were under the false impression that the nightmares you were serving would break me with overwhelm. You underestimated me, and overestimated your own powers because in your moment of triumph, you gave me the antidote to the hypnotic tapestry you’d so cleverly and patiently woven. The depth of your own despair was your undoing.

I could have led you from those depths but you chose your own voices. You believe your own deception because it’s one that is shared by so many of your kind. As harsh as your words have been for me, I can only imagine how much harsher they are for yourself. You believe the only way for you to live with that unbearable pain is to invite others to share in it. I know this for I was once like you.

You are strong. Strong, and powerful enough in numbers to have poisoned me beyond hope. You were almost strong enough to pull me into your mediocrity. In the end your deceit has failed and all your cobwebs of confusion are nothing more than the tattered wisps of your own unlived dreams, swinging in the dead air of ancient decaying tree limbs.

I am the light that pierced your darkness and reminded you that you’re here for another reason. I am the mirror in which you see your own failings, the reflection that you blame for your despair and desperation.  I am strong enough to stand for you but your fear of the pain is greater than your desire for relief. You thought to bring me into the fold but instead have made me even stronger to stand against the dark.

Let your failure to destroy my light awaken you from your poisoned trance. Leave the enchanted forest. Don’t let the trolls win.

The Only Constant in Life is Change

It’s a day of epiphanies. One year ago this month, I went mobile. Emptied my house, traded my truck for a motor home and hit the road with my cat, Lily. We spent six months wreaking havoc throughout the southwest, then returned to California and have been parked at Madre Grande Monastery, deciding what’s next.

The epiphany is, as mobile as my house was; my career was immobilized, at a dead standstill. I was immobilized, hanging in limbo while I sorted through my past to clear up any lingering debris. I was stuck in old client rates in a new economy, and old relationships that didn’t work the first time but somehow they got a second (or third) chance only to fail once again. 

The verdict on all this dipping into the past is, enough is enough. I know for a fact that all you have to do to change your life is to change your mind. And mean it. No lingering pity party, no hopeless wishing it was  different, no more waiting to have a happy childhood. 

This is your life. You chose this incarnation. The good news is, if you don’t get it this time, you’ll get another chance in another lifetime. Or is that the bad news? Do you really want to numb out now, give up on being all you can be, of being at your most joyous every possible moment of the day, just so you can come back in another life and survive all the hard stuff all over again in order to get back to where you are now?  That sentence is nowhere near as long as repeating a lifetime because you don’t believe you can change your mind in this one.

Whatever you’re holding onto that hurts; the first step is to decide today to tell a different story about it. You can change your mind about anything, once you’ve decided you’re willing to do so. Sometimes it’s necessary to dip into the past in order to make peace and release those things that are hanging so you can move on. Just be sure you don’t get stuck there.