We like to believe that it is eclipsing the big traumas in our lives that ignites transformation. Yet for me, it is the subtleties of the seemingly smaller life events that so often ignite the greatest change. One such event for me was celebrating my birthday at age 8. My aunt who lived with us arrived home late from work when the birthday dinner was over. I remember sitting on the couch and looking up at her as she entered through the front door to our home and asking her, Hi. Did you get me a present? She did not smile. Instead, irritation appeared on her face. Her response was, ‘NO, I did not.’ In that moment, I knew immediate rejection and felt that I had done something really wrong by asking the question. I curled in on myself and withdrew. A while later, my aunt called me into the kitchen and presented me with a present along with the declaration that I should not , I should never expect to receive. The feeling I had was, How dare I? Expect nothing and you’ll be on your best behaviour. I learned that I was expected to not expect. I also learned the receiving came with expectations (strings) to not expect attached.

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!

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving. While it is likely an old expression, it is one that I have heard my daughter state with both humour and chagrin, whenever it’s ugly head rears up.

Every day, it seems that I am further awakened to what I call another green-dot moment; you know, one of those epiphanies that wake you in the middle of the night or stop you in your tracks as you open a cupboard door… just thinking about something which, on the surface, seems to have no relevance to your life at all, yet, contextually, has significantly underpinned the structure of your current reality outside of your conscious awareness.

I do have my moments wondering about what is really going on in the world, such that we now find ourselves collectively in this surreal space we have created. I know that we are at a most significant fork in the road. We can look for a new ’normal’ where the content of our lives looks different inside frameworks that remain the same (which means that we will continue to engage in same old, same old, telling ourselves we are not) OR we can choose to change our context for being and living, which will change the narratives (the stories we tell ourselves to make it OK to be whom we are - i.e. the content) of our lives, because we will have radically chosen to embrace a higher order of thinking that will, without question, change our beliefs, our values and our attitudes about whom and what we are and can continue to become as quantum biological humans. Will we continue to look outside of ourselves and be shaped into lives that are not sustainable OR will we take up our lives into our own hands to uniquely shape our worlds as the treasures of our birthright they are meant to become?