Hello my friends and welcome back! And a very special greeting to those who are new to my life and these messages. I have greatly enjoyed having you cross my path this year and am thankful for your company and hopeful you will stay.
I realize I’m a bit tardy with my annual reflection but I was undecided on the latest motto and what message I wanted to convey. I scrambled for some time before stumbling ungracefully on a writer’s block and finally decided to allow my feelings to take over the keyboard while leaving all considerable thought behind. Grab a cocktail. Here is the result …
Okay, so here we are once again; blessed with another year in which to celebrate. A chance to make mistakes and amends. Another opportunity to forgive ourselves and each other. One more time to see how extraordinary we truly are and how precious life really is. To witness the dawn of a new day and be engrossed by the excitement of what is in store for each one of us in the next twelve months; waiting anxiously for the gifts we will all receive this year.
As you may recall, last year we trusted ourselves to “Taking Risks in ‘06”. So, did you? If so, how did you fare? Are you bruised, battered, and bewildered by the experience or are you empowered and enthused to do it again? Or perhaps you decided to play it safe this time around and chose to watch from the sidelines; observing others making big changes and personal choices for themselves. Did you wince as they did so with reckless abandon? Did you recoil in fear?
What will be your personal joy this year? What lessons are there for you to learn and then leave for another to find? What treasures are buried just below the surface for you to come across unexpectedly? What will your personal heaven be?
What strength will you gain back? What power will you unearth again? What will be your great accomplishment this year and whom will you share it with? What will be your biggest loss and who will you lean on?
Whatever heaven on earth looks like to you, find it this year. Whatever ‘cloud nine’ feels like to you, reach out and touch it this time. We do not know what life will bring, but surely we can ask for what we want. Even a small child knows this great secret. Children are constantly asking for things; crying for this and begging for that. You know the drill: they have to have it or they will literally fall down and die (or so they think). They have tirades. They want. Want! Want! And they do this with such vigor! When we try to stop them, they hold their breath until they turn blue in the face and all the while you are seeing red. They want. And they ought!
As we got older, we stopped the tirades and started accepting. Now we feel guilty for asking and selfish for wanting. We found fear and lost our bravado. Sure we gained a vocabulary, but we also lost our voice. We suppress our tongues and in doing so, our desires. As we grew up, we held our breath and counted to ten so we would come to our “senses.” And when we finally do exhale, it usually reeks of frustration. We allow others to dictate to us what is comfortable for them so they become relaxed while we become restless.
Let’s take our cues from a child this year. Let’s want again. Let’s ask. Let’s voice ourselves. Let’s speak without an opinion and listen without question. Let’s remember what it was like to spend an entire afternoon laying on our backs in the green grass looking up at the blue sky with your best friend beside you. Let’s feel the sun on our face and enjoy the scent of Coppertone in the summer again. Let’s turn up the volume to eleven and play music without earphones. If even for a day, let’s not have an agenda or a plan or a goal. Let’s nap.
Let’s eat cake for dinner.
Remember what your personal heaven on earth felt like? Was it the warmth of a rock you were climbing or the cool splash of water as you swam in a lake? Was heaven the vibration of the bat connecting with the ball or the crisp air hitting your face? Was it coming home exhausted from playing in the streets all day? Remember playing in the streets all day? Heaven! Did your heaven consist of falling asleep at the end of the day with your pet curled up at the end of your bed?
Whatever the peaceful feeling is that you remember, bring it out and give it confidence again. Look to the children. Want. Ask. Get. And if anyone tries to stop you, just hold your breath until you turn blue in the face!
When you die and go to Heaven, how closely will it resemble the one you lived on Earth?
Now get out there and “Find Your Heaven in 2007.”
