Yesterday, I met with an old friend. This man, this amazing being of light is a brother of mine. We have known each other a few years, and I have known him in another lifetime for sure, if you believe in that sort of thing. Just a lovely being. Yes.
He is a musician you see. A glorious eclectic musician who follows his beautiful passion for music. As a self-taught musician, he travels the vast Chicago area bringing his gifts to others. He shares his tapestry of musical compositions with others, for no apparent reason other than to give love and share his passionate heart through his art. A beautiful musician and a beautiful way to live.
Every Thursday he invites people to his abode to just be. A ‘by appointment & get to know you’ session with no agenda. Let’s just sit and get to know each other. Just refreshing.
His only expectation is to just share stories. Sit as long as you like, allow the conversation to just emerge, and just enjoy the company. To say the least… it was delightful. We filled our time with amazingness. Amazing ideas, amazing passions, and amazing effortless love. Whatever wanted to come in…came and the conversation just became more all on its own. We held space for each other and delighted in our similar and different views on life. It was an eloquent orchestration of heart spoken words deeply meaningful and profoundly elaborate. Sometimes we agreed and sometimes we didn’t. Accepting and allowing the flow to take us wherever it wanted to go. As if we were riding a smooth riverbed filled with possibility. I felt seen, heard, and accepted…something that has been estranged to me for so long. I was grateful.
You see, a long time ago, feels like lifetimes ago… I lost my family. To pain, heartache, and mental instabilities that we label as addictions and mental illness in today’s modern world. Growing up, it was a very tough life. Very tough. Lots of heart ache, pain, and tragedy. As I grew up, more tragedy perused my life in many ways. I had been given many obstacles in most of my life to overcome. I eventually wrote a book on the subject thinking this would help my troubles… and hopefully help others in similar situations. And it did… for awhile… until I realized that my limitations were exactly that… my own… and writing a book would not solve the issue but changing my perception did. So, even to this day… I use all the gifts that were bestowed upon me to help me through troubling times and to keep shifting my perception so that nothing equaled a limitation anymore. Truly coming to terms with the struggles I felt like I had to face and turning the struggles into vast landscapes of possibilities.
I heard an author say that he had many ideas. So many ideas that were so inspiring that it was a burden at times. Kind of like… I can do so MANY things and there are so MANY possibilities… how do I get them all done? That was anxiety producing. It felt like a responsibility… much like the responsibilities we put on ourselves to make it in this world or follow the path that we think we are supposed to do. I really related to that. For me, it’s like walking into a SUPER TARGET… I get overwhelmed by the number of choices. I don’t want to choose between 50 types of tomato sauce… I just want the one that was made out of passion and love by the individual who made it.
This author had a remedy for his perceived limitation… the number of great ideas that he had. He started a folder. He called it ‘Great Ideas’ that would take some time to develop and bring into fruition. Then he would store these ideas and periodically look at them. After a while some of them that were ‘great’ would just seem not so great anymore and others would continue to remain ‘great’. The ones that hung out and knocked on his passion door are the ones he would choose to develop over time. And this worked for him.
This helped me a lot. I started applying this same idea to my life. Instead of looking at everything as another limitation that I had to overcome I started choosing differently. I started choosing whether I needed to go that direction or this one. I started choosing for me again.
Probably because I am just at that point in my life now. My role as a Mother has shifted tremendously and I no longer have to do the things I did before to help the people in my life in the way that I used to. I chose to do it this way… and now I can choose again.
So here I was choosing to spend time with a marvelous musician who has always looked at life that way. Free to be himself in good times and bad. Just expressing his creativity and allowing life to take him down the riverbed of mystery. What a glorious concept.
Inspired I was… to say the least. In that moment… I made a decision that would change my life. I decided to live again in the way that felt good to me. To just continue to be me and allow my gifts to go where they are asked for with no expectation in return.
I am beginning again… this time I am looking at my life as a beautiful piece of music that keeps moving and shifting, and changing, and traversing through the compilation called ‘living’. And it is uniquely my own.
That’s the beauty of spending time with people. We can just be ourselves. Just coming together and getting to know each other. It’s magical.
A lot of us grow up thinking we must be someone or something when we get older. Ugh… I think that is a lofty idea and it is hard for me to understand why people want to GROW UP. I just want to be a kid forever. Play in the sunshine, sink in the mud, and sing to the moon. Effortless and free. We need more of that… we need more BIG Kids on this planet to help us small people feel like its ok. And then maybe there would be a beautiful piece of music that has the potential to tune our hearts to a profoundly incredible world. Wouldn’t that be amazing!?
Maybe more of us would be a lot happier and feel a lot better if we gave ourselves permission to be more of who we wanted to be instead of what everyone else wanted us to become. Maybe all we needed was for someone to tell us that this is a choice we can actually make… at any age. Plain and simple… be more of you. Just being you and doing more of what you love… repeatedly will eventually lead you to everything you ever thought you needed. And you know what happens then… you begin to really live again.
All my love,
Jennifer Lauren
