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"Tell me a story of who you are,
And see who I am in the stories I am living.
And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.
Don’t tell me how wonderful things will be… some day.
Show me you can risk being completely at peace,
truly OK with the way things are right now in this moment,
and again in the next and the next and the next..”
excerpt from Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s “The Dance”
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Its taken me four months to finally be at peace with a number of events that occurred earlier this year… some aspects I had control, but for the most part, I was at the mercy of powers greater than I. In the last four months, I haven’t felt as peaceful and right as I do in this moment. To be perfectly honest, its a sad sort of realization, mainly because this is occurring in retrospect. To some degree, I wasn’t allowing myself to fully soak these experiences in because my thoughts were revolving around whether or not I belonged here, wondering if this was the right place?
But I guess its not about asking “am I in the right place?” but, “am I in the right place, now?” Is where I am now where I need to be in order to progress and learn? And of course, the answer is yes. In a context where I am powerless on so many levels, what do I have control over? What do I have within myself that is completely my own? Are we allowing ourselves to define the experience, or simply letting the experience define us? To what degree are we succumbing to the decisions and choices of others, and to what degree are we actively drawing from what is happening to us?
Choice. A conscious decision to focus on the positive, to see what one is gaining, to truly be pleased in the moment that we are in.