Occupy Life

Don’t worry, this won’t be a political diatribe.

As perhaps you’ve been garnering from some of the recent writing, I’m becoming more open to be available to my own life. To occupy it, as it were.

This has happened slowly, and is still a work in progress. But I remember back to the “Life of an Asparagus” blog, about beginning to sense that some of the seeds I’ve been sowing over the last few years are beginning to peek through, and show me their colors and flavors.

I’m excited by this prospect, and still, afraid of it. Will the asparagus be green enough? Tender enough? Snappy enough? Will I, as I begin to show you more of who I am, and what I have to offer, be enough?

The un/fortunate truth is that I don’t really have a choice to pull the emergency brake here, and say, WHOA buddy, let me make sure that this is all kosher and “molly-approved” before I put it out there to you.

When I’d been contemplating The Cousin (*not my cousin*) a while ago before we ended, I said to a friend that I felt like I wanted to put him up on a shelf, to pause him and our romance. I wanted the time to figure myself out, get “well,” get fixed, and then take him back down and continue the romance, with me as a whole, well person.

Problem is, life isn’t like that, and people aren’t like that. I don’t get to put anything on hold – others, myself, the world, school, my finances, time – so that I can get a better handle on it.

It’s a constant game of changing the tire while the car is in motion.

Constantly evolving means being willing to give up control; to give up the demands for the future.

In all of this “lifeness” that’s going on, however, things are changing, and have changed, and I find myself at a different place than I had been, having arrived here somewhat circuitously, but somewhere where things are, where I am, different.

I haven’t had to pause the world for me to get here. I’ve had to, in fact, jump on board with the fact that this train is leaving and will continue to leave, and I can ignore the fact it’s moving, or I can enjoy the view. And more than that, I can let myself be shaped by its movement.

That “letting myself be shaped” has been the hardest part. Or one of them. To accept that I’m not exactly sure what I’ll look like, who I’ll be, and if I’ll or you’ll like me on the other side of it. But keeping my eyes closed to the brilliance that is outside and inside, well, it’s kept me pretty lonely and forlorn. And in the end, it’s not fair.

Who am I to shut my eyes to what I’ve been given, what others are offering me? To the love that is being offered me – the help, and the hope, and the encouragement, and the desire I’m told for more… of me. Who am I to deny that?

I begin to think about this, and write this today, as I start to recognize this new path of thought and action. One which, although I may not be taking all of the action steps that are suggested, I’m becoming open to taking them ;) I see their merit – I see that these actions are helping me to fill out my life, like an underinflated balloon that could be buoyant and loved, if it only let itself get full.

Perhaps that analogy fell flat. But, I think I’m understanding what it means! It means that I’m changing. It means that I’m becoming more available to my life, and to my gifts, and to others. It means that I’m beginning to choose community and vulnerability as opposed to contraction and “safety.”

I’ve had to tell a few more people a little more about what I’m doing, and what I like to do, because those were the indicated responses. (I write, I sing, I act, I paint.) Every time I tell someone one of these things, there is the reactionary twinge of fear and the cavernous echoing “NO!!!” … but, I do it anyway, now. And every time I do, I’m staking one more claim to my own life, and allowing it to open up to me as I open up to it.