LIVE the story you want to be living.

I posted this on my FB wall on my birthday, and I think it deserves to go here too...

**Originally posted on 6 Aug 2012**
Nothing like starting my birthday off with a midnight run in the rain. :)

Khrysti's birthday thought o' the day: I've been hearing/reading a lot lately about letting go of whatever "story" you maintain about yourself that's holding you or keeping you from whatever growth you would like to be experiencing. But lately I've been wondering if the solution isn't to let go of all stories, but instead to make sure that you are actually living the one composite story you *want* to be living... reducing the distance/disconnect between the way you know you actually are (because you can't fool yourself) and the way you really *want* to be (the story you *want* to believe/know is true about yourself). In other words, taking action towards actually LIVING that story, starting now.

Maybe that's my birthday wish... for any of you who have ever had the thought "I wish I was more/less ____________" or "I wish I was more like ________" to take any possible little step today towards actually BEING "more/less ___________" or "more like _________".

♥ you all so very much.

(If it helps to post it here as a birthday present to me please do. :) )

*****

And a couple of delightful follow-up quotes:

"Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value." - Hesse
"To know that you do not know is the best. To pretend to know is disease." - Lao Tzu

Leaning into it...

One of my favorite bloggers posted this today, and it's right in line with a concept that bubbled over a bit in a few areas in my life this weekend... don't you just love it when that kind of vortex happens?  Gives me those lovely goosebumps of "rightness".

"...nervous energy [anxiety or fear] is often a signpost that what you're about to do matters. The real challenge is to learn to intuit whether the visceral response is shutting down opportunity or keeping you from physical harm.

There are times when it's the latter. And those are the moments, when there is very real risk of physical danger, when you seriously consider the intelligence of backing away. But, in my experience (at least once you're out of your teens), the vast majority of times, it's the former. And that's all about leaning in."

With the help of a few of the amazing people I have in my life, I finally realized last night that the major loneliness I've been feeling for the past month is because I've set myself some legitimately challenging goals.  And given that my tendency (that I'm thankfully in the process of letting go) is to look to a partnered relationship as an escape from, or avoidance of, the challenging responsibilities I've given myself,  I've been feeling desperate for that "security" of a partnered relationship.  But it's not security.  It's avoidance.  And therefore it's hollow and ethereal... a fear-driven echo of the solidly REAL relationships I actually want (and already do have in so many ways) that are based on a foundation of strongly centered and grounded independence.

 

So here's to leaning into the wind.  ;D

A few of my favorite things...

This is one of my new favorite things.  MakeyMakey!!  :D

Today I made...

My feminist perspective

As with so many huge changes in societal thought and practice, there are subtleties that go way deeper than the major-but-superficial things we fight so strongly for. Often, the alteration of those subtleties has to do with truly letting go of the underlying fundamental premise, instead of just fighting for the opposite outcome within that premise.

Take the Slutwalk movement, essentially characterized by this eloquent phrase:

"Why do we teach women how not to dress instead of men how not to rape?"

For me it this idea has become something much more profound about reclaiming the concept of what it means for a woman to be a "slut": as it stands, that word is often used to describe a woman who either has a lot of sex with different partners, or, heaven forbid, is open about the fact that she enjoys it. The idea of reclaiming this concept means altering the fundamental culturally-upheld dichotomy between a woman's and a man's "acceptable" sexual thoughts, desires, and behaviors. If being a "slut" means that I am secure and accepting of my inherent sexual nature and allow myself to pursue my own desires *without shame*, then yes please.

But the key is that it also be without belligerence or bitterness against the culture that spawned that word in the first place. Because as long as you continue to push against something, you continue to acknowledge its existence. You continue to give it structure. The act of pushing against something gives it the fuel to keep pushing back. But if you instead simply step aside and let it fall... if you stop believing it has power... then suddenly it doesn't.

So the feminist movement, to me, isn't about claiming equality, it's about claiming femininity. It's about insisting not that we're equal, because we're not and that's part of the beautiful balance of nature, but that we are all exactly what we are and we have the right to accept true reality.

This post was inspired by this article on a woman's right to react. (And thanks to a few aikido practices for part of that lesson.)