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Mindful Living:
Plunging into Passion
NOTE TO MY READERS: My good friend Alison Hilber is kind of a
spiritual muse for me. I call her up and ask her questions about
everything - life, love, work, chocolate, whatever. What's nice
about Alison is that she usually has a few answers on hand
thanks to her books on spiritual philosophy, and so can give me
the Cliff Notes version. Together, we figure out how to apply
these things to real life - and surprisingly, many of the
theories actually do work. Lots of Alison's ideas show up in my
columns, morphed into things that may or may not resemble
anything she actually said - I call them "Alsionisms."
I can't really pick them out of my writing like anchovies off a
pizza because they are really more like the tomatoes in the
sauce, chunky but not discernable. So I hereby give credit to
Alsion (aka Alison) for #1. Being such a wonderful friend, and
#2. For all her cool ideas, some of which you will find in my
story below.
Alison and I wrote complimentary columns on passion for the
spring 2002 issue of Planet Vermont. You
can read Alison's column here.
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The other day I had a fight with my friend Ren. It was our
first disagreement so neither of us really knew how things would
work out. It turns out that Ren is the kind of friend who works
things through. She didn’t opt out, and that’s something I
like in a person. We’ve have only been buddies for a few
months, so she didn’t know me well enough to know how I
worked, and that contributed to our misunderstanding. You see, a
few weeks ago I made a rather dramatic decision about something.
The exact details don’t matter much, but from Ren’s
perspective I was being impulsive and making the decision out of
fear. She didn’t see the processing that went on before I made
the decision, so from her perspective it all seemed sudden and
inexplicable.
It took some time to explain to her how I work, and I
realized along the way that my approach to life, my spiritual
approach, is unusual in that it guides so much of what I do on
an everyday basis. Above my computer I have a post-it note with
four words: Passion, Joy, Strength, and Spirit. These are my
watchwords, and the ways that I best connect with my sense of
the divine.
I articulate these things through an exuberant and intense
approach to just about everything I do. But this is something I
learned to live; it didn't come naturally. A few years ago I was
forced to rebuild much of my life from near ground zero. I
decided then that instead of doing all the things I had done all
along, many of which had been pretty much grandfathered in, I
would choose who I was and how I would spend my time. I gave up
a lot of hobbies and also a few friends. Since then, each time I
have had a choice about how I would spend my spiritual and
creative energy, I made that choice with an eye to what was most
in alignment with my sense of joyful inner being. Today, most of
the things that I do are deeply meaningful to me and so there is
very little chaff.
Each time I have an idea, and this happens a few times a
week, I sit down with God and talk about it. It’s not a
literal thing like sitting down with Ren over cappuccino, but
rather holding it, the idea, the passion quietly for a while so
that I can see if it fits. Once I know if it’s the right thing
for me, I take action immediately. Really, the decision has
already been made long before, when that little something began
percolating deep in my spiritual self. The rest is just the what
and when and how. I believe that Spirit would not give me a
passion or a drive to do something if there were not some gift
in it, so I rarely question things that move me.
Knowing what I want is one of the exceptional results of
communing with Spirit on a regular basis. Whether it is love,
writing, catering, or buying a condo – I can leap off the
diving board and immerse myself without fear. I smell the
fragrance, touch its textures, listen to its sounds. It is never
a mistake, can never be a mistake, because in making my choices
from a spiritual place, there can be no wrong choices. Any
decision based on expressing my own true self cannot, by
definition, be a wrong decision. I might not always like all the
consequences, but I have not regretted the choices I’ve made.
All of them, at least in the last few years, were made by
listening to that still small voice within.
I take a lot of risks, and quite often I do not get what I
want. But I do not see these experiences as failures. For one
thing, I am an optimist, and can always see the good things that
have come out of every experience no matter how painful.
(Sometimes it takes a while though). More importantly, in having
negotiated my way through each discovery, I brought my life to
the next level of focus. Each time I experience a new passion,
it takes me closer to the next and deeper passion – a process
that cannot happen without a few detours and rest areas and
crumpled maps along the wayside. When I don’t get what I
thought I wanted, I often grieve deeply, and that can seem to
the outside observer to be an obsession or even a depression.
Superficially speaking it may well be an obsession, but on the
deeper level, being so connected with things that move me
demands an equal emotional faithfulness to the loss of that
opportunity. Quite often I can later see why things didn’t
work out the way I’d hoped, and I can also see what good
things I learned from the experience.
So this is how I live my passionate life, and it’s how I
explained my apparently impulsive actions to Ren. My passion is
about living fully in this moment today. It’s when I buy Milky
Way bars for the candy bowl because I know those are my
co-worker’s favorite munchie. It’s when I see something
beautiful in a friend and tell them. It’s when I taste the
tiny touch of sweetness on a honeysuckle flower. It’s when I
reach toward my cat in the dark and feel his whiskers tickle my
fingertips. It is, also, when I write about the things that move
me in a way that others can feel that tickle from my soul.
Living this way can be hard for me sometimes because it can
be tiring– not emotionally or spiritually tiring, but just
plain physical exhaustion. Sometimes after writing a very
intimate column I’ll need a good nap, and sometimes after a
big catering job it’ll be a few days to reset my body and
mind. I am also learning to balance these intense periods
through deep breathing and prayer. All this energy and focus and
drive can also be hard on my friends, who tell me it sometimes
feels like being hit by a train. This is one of those areas
where “only the strong survive,” as the people who are
overwhelmed by my energy usually turn away. Sometimes it’s not
so much about their being strong as it is about being grounded
in their own identity.
The friends who do hang around me tend to be pretty
passionate themselves. My sister Cindy says she feels passionate
about buying the right tool for the job, so she recently spent
$25 on a laminator scissors even though she knew she’d only
use it twice a year. Another friend, Garet, says she feels
passion when swimming because she feels surrounded and supported
by a whole other medium, something that allows her to lift free
of life’s daily dealings.
I think everyone has something they are passionate about, and
everyone is eloquent when they speak about the things that move
them. How do you express your passion for life? Do you do a
little bit of it everyday? It doesn’t have to be a big
production like writing a book or saving a life. It could be by
writing a thank you note to someone who did you a favor or being
the “dish fairy” for a day. It could be by bringing some
Godiva chocolates to a friend or even buying yourself something
frivolous like hair spray with gold sparkles in it.
Whatever your passion, it’s important that you live a
little bit of it every day. And be sure to ask your friends what
they feel passionate about. Maybe in finding out what moves
them, they will in turn come to understand you as well.
Copyright October, 2001
Reprinting
Information
Would you like to reprint this column? If so, do ask! I
usually allow distribution because spiritually speaking, sharing
ideas is an important way of expressing my faith. Please e-mail
me at CybeleW@aol.com
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