People know me as the crazy singing lady. Note that I didn't say the lady who sings well. Actually, these days it's very reminiscent of a pubescent male who's been hit in the jewels, but I digress.
People KNOW me as....
That precise language is at the center of the journey I've accidentally found myself forging through lately. I'll spare you the specifics except to say that a person can sometimes wake up on the other side of something intense and discover that she's not who she was or that who she's been isn't enough anymore. The answers she thought she had are wrong and the life she had been content with for so many years suddenly ceases to be adequate.
There also comes a point in all of our lives when we can no longer block out the inevitability of death. It's one adventure none of us are going to escape, so why do we insist on living so many days, putting so many things off, assuming we're guaranteed (X) amount of time beyond today?
Now, I know some of you reading this (all 5 of you, thanks Mom, Dad and brothers) are thinking, "Geez, Bennett. Why do you have to be such a downer talking about all of us dying?"
But I'd like to counter that with another question. Why do we automatically think dying has to be a 'downer'? None of us have ever done it before, so how do we know it's gloom and doom? For all we know, dying could be the eternal Studio 54.
I'm also not suggesting each of us should suck it up and come to terms with the ticking clock of our lifespan. That's not my point. Hell, I can't suck it up and come to terms with it now either! Anytime I let my mind wander or wonder, depending on how you look at it, down the path of mortality, I give myself a sharp shake and pull a Scarlett O'Hara, becoming a walking contradiction of....insert dramatic pause.....one of my own questions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-OoIvgtuzs
Let's step outside of our comfort zone for a moment and instead of saying 'people know me as,' let's consider what would follow 'people KNEW me as.'
Are we satisfied with how we finished that statement? Are we living
true to the legacy we always meant to leave behind? What do we want to
create for ourselves while we’re here and is that creation even aligned with
our envisioned legacies? And if what we want to create isn't
in line with our legacy, which of the two isn't the honest portrayal of who we
really are and which one do we need to change to stop living like the
proverbial hamster on the spinning wheel and always be able to move forward
with our true selves first?
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