Full moon tonight/ tomorrow. Perhaps it’s true what they say… that you can create the life you want for yourself. But I’m just wondering… is this a superpower we’re all just gaining access to? ‘Cause I think I can believe it, when things are going great. But when everything seems like it’s falling apart… I’m not so sure I possess this power. And I’m pretty sure my great, great grandparents didn’t want to see themselves in the midst of an apocalypse we now neatly box and label “slavery” in our tidy file cabinet of life and human history. Nor do I think it was the life intention of my other great grandparents to release a child into indentured servitude as a coal miner. This whole concept of “creating one’s own life” seems a little loaded given the hefty weight of history upon my life story…
But that in itself is something we do have the power to create. The way in which we choose to reflect, remember and recount our own life his/her/our-stories is something that falls entirely within our own grasp.
Our audience, our listeners, the other half of our circle plays as much of a role in the stories we choose to form, shape and weave into the context of a dialogue or monologue, prologue or epilogue as we ourselves have. Learning, sharing and growing is a cooperative venture… a reflection of the community as much as the individual or family. All of our voices are valid and necessary… each of our dreams need to be realized and our potential attained in order for our collective well-being to reach its maximum.
Perhaps, in retrospect, it is easier to identify those paths or practices that did not lead to the results we anticipated. In these cases, knowing and acknowledging what does not produce desired outcomes is just as important as knowing the steps to success. That is I suppose where exerting positive pressure on one another, like first aid to an open wound, is effective in encouraging each of us to take a step into the limelight, whether at the kitchen table, on the playground sand, or in the boardroom. We must hold each other to the task of finding, knowing and sharing our own truths – even when that means holding silence so that something more might be heard….
