Choosing Joy

It has been an amazing 5 months for me. I feel like I have been attending university, so to speak, so engaged have I become in discovering different perspectives and points of view from thought leaders of all stripes - both known and unknown. Not all of them agree. Nor should they. As I wrote in a recent email to a friend, the only thing I find predictable in this world we are living in, is its unpredictability.

At the end of the day, I believe that each one of us must choose wisely re: how she wants to live and create her world. It matters not that our loved ones may protest that we have lost our minds - when we are choosing to act courageously and authentically on our own behalves - in the face of the obvious that we have not lost our minds; instead, we have found them.

It is a sad day when fear becomes the mechanism for triaging life. That, indeed, has become a current and unfortunate reality. Dare I say, intended? Dare I Question, Has it not always been so?

When fear is biting recklessly at their ankles, irritating manners in those who profess unconditional ‘love’ to act in ways that ensure you do nothing more to further upend their familiar states of mind, managing compliance - and calling it something else (eg. Be reasonable, won't you?) will become their raging priority.

The only means to change that is to walk to the deeply internal beat of your own drum... and it could mean feeling, hearing, and seeing yourself walk away from ALL that you have held dear. This could mean letting go of relationships to the people you care about, the places , the things, as well as the ideas and concepts that have kept you unconsciously compliant to ways of being that you now know are no longer life-sustaining. Where you once could/would not see the patterns in play, you can no longer turn away from the obvious. This process of letting go, you'll soon realize - if you have not already done so - invites recognition that your mind is your greatest treasure and so, so worth cherishing. Will you allow it? Your mind is not for sale and it cannot be bought. This truth, revered, stands solidly in sharp contrast to the aeons-old and ever-prevailing trance, disseminated through 24/7 media and marketing, that our minds can be bought… and, therefore, ought to be, should be, must be. Remember that line from the movie, Jurassic Park: Just because we can, does not mean we should. Just because THEY can, does not mean THEY should.

This is the moment that you may feel, within you, your own determination percolating to stay awake and aware, for your own sake… for the reverence of fully living and fully dying, We are at a critical point in our lives where we must become buck naked to our own Selves, if we are going to choose joy as THE valid path for living... which also means that it is THE valid path for dying. Living and dying: these are the front and back of the same hand. As a species, we have become so afraid of dying, that we have forgotten how to live…. and that we CAN live.

Choosing joy does not distract from, deny, negate, ignore or avoid the ugly truth of the world that we have created. Instead, it directs our attention of focus toward a resilient force that cherishes our minds… and, ultimately, our hearts. This is when we own the truth that each one of us is whole, unique and essential to our worlds. We can't not be that!

Because we have unquestionable capacity to create trance as the medium for moving through our worlds... and we are doing it all the time... it is essential that we stay awake and aware in cultivating a trance of joy for the continuing germination of life, lived fully in the process of dying. And it IS always, in all ways, a choice.