Choosing to Be

The Rules for Being Human - 
Dr. Chérie Carter-Scott

9. Your life is up to you. Life provides the canvas; you do the painting. 
Take charge of your life.

For years, I've had a poster up in my office, which reads, 

It is so important to choose your own lifestyle 
and not let someone else choose it for you.
Susan Polis Schultz

It's a big thing to begin to understand that your life is yours to do with as you choose. Often, we forget. Or, better, we give intellectual consent to the idea, but come up with exceptions --  to keep ourselves from actually putting what we need to do, and more importantly, whom we need to be,  into practice.

It's quite the privilege, doing what I do. I get to share in the dramas of the clients I see. And nothing is more interesting than when a client or a friend (or I . . .) gets an inspiration and  re-captures a part of themselves.

Often, such moments are the result of the reflection that comes from a milestone. A person reads a book or sees a movie (you have seen American Beauty, right? If not, run out and see it!). Others get fired, or have a "moment" in their career that leads them to question what they are doing. Some have a relationship end, others get sick. And having a decade birthday (40 is a popular one) is a biggie for self-reflection. 

We reach adulthood whom we are due to a set of circumstances we've described before. The culture, the tribe we grow up in has an investment in getting us to fit in and behave. We are taught to emphasize the skill set popular in our family, culture, country. Other aspects of our selves get pushed down, pushed away. We become only part of our skill set -- only partly our actual self.. What we lack is depth and Spirit -- a sense of our life as a lived vocation.

Most simply give in to be like everyone else. Oh, we may have had our moments of rebellion -- the best most of us can remember is rebelling as teens or acting out in University. Those actions seem, to our memories, like we were actually making choices. But mostly, such behaviour was simply doing the opposite of what society wanted. 

It was not a choice, it was a reaction.

It never occurs to the vast majority of folk to move past the norms of our culture -- to create a wider version of our true self. No, we settle in, settle down, settle. And we wait. 

I talked with two women this week about whether it was time for them to be going off to Gabriola Island to do a month long Phase program. In both cases, the women made a fair case for why "now" was not the right time. Money, work commitments and such were high on the list. 

Now, Phase 1 is specifically about finding yourself -- learning to communicate intimately, learning to identify more and more elements about who you are. My sense of most people is that the real reason they don't begin this process, is because they aren't used to spending time and effort on themselves. In other words, everything takes precedence over them. Their life may be a canvas, but they don't consider themselves to be artists. 

Those of us that paint know that the scary part is not the actual paintbrush to canvas. It's hanging the picture for everyone to see. I can remember major anxiety attacks before showing paintings or photographs. When you paint a picture and hang it up, people can't help but notice.

So, most people simply do the expected thing and hide, somewhere behind the canvas. They do all they can to blend in so that no one will notice. Which gets us people who are willing to work behind the scenes, to run the machines of life, but no one to invent them. So to speak.

In truth, there is a strong calling, present in all of us, to become real, to become whole. It may be a little voice whispering, or some form of expression calling out for birth. It may be hints from friends "I can't figure out why you don't (fill in the blank)." Or there may be a gut level yearning. But it's there. 

To simply settle for what you've always done, to go along while attempting to not rock the boat (any boat), to let others determine the course of your life -- well, nothing is more deadly. To choose to take your self seriously, to bring into being more and more of whom you truly are, despite the risk of rejection by self-appointed critics, is the ultimate freedom.

Doesn't make it easy. But the canvas of your life is a painting that can only be begun and work on (but never finished) by you. To choose not to paint is to live a life that is, at best, a a pale imitation. And the world, we know, has altogether too much of that.

Find a Spiritual director, coach, therapist, Bodyworker -- someone -- and begin to explore what you've been stuffing. Then, pick up the brush, and begin. 

No excuses. You don't have forever. Indeed, you simply have today.