Cosmic Gardener – Cultivating a Life

When you take responsibility for something it teaches you to love it. The journey together does not always start in a state of liking however, only the promise of connection and the possibility of growth.

The best relationships are like a three ring circus. Each person has his/her own interests and sphere of influence but the ring that brings them together is always the main attraction.

How do you approach challenging situations? As a fault finder or as a problem solver? As a victim, or as a participant?

There’s always another way to look at things.

It’s easier to repair a marble statue than a human being.
People need to be recalibrated from the inside out.

Is your life a journey, or a treadmill? An adventure story, or a tale of survival?

As authors of our own life stories we craft many scripts for ourselves. In our starring roles the actions we take dictate the scenes and the story line creates the narrative.

As authors we can change the stories, at any time.

When reflecting on our own behavior it’s often said that hindsight is 20/20. I’ve come to suspect that same clarity of vision from the outside looking in.

What do we see when observing others?
How do we interpret what we see?

Do we share our perspectives?
How do we share our perspectives?

Observation. Interpretation. Communication.

Or not.

Becoming ourselves, by being ourselves, is our chief assignment.
There is nothing more important than waking up.
Opening to Life lets it reveal us to ourselves.

In a lively exchange recently a beloved and erudite friend of mine who pays her rent by selling words threw out the phrase “full expression.” We had been talking about things like purpose and what’s next and rather than make an assumption I asked what that meant to her. Though I’ve revisited the conversation with her several times she has still not been able to craft its definition.  It’s as if the phrase came to her full blown and like a koan its meaning, even to her, is elusive.

More recently I heard a story about what full expression is not. A long-married friend of a friend has let her husband design and decorate their home, inside and out because “he likes that kind of thing” and she “doesn’t care.” The tale came out during the woman’s visit to our mutual friend’s new home and she said of the eclectic furnishings, “I bet everything has a story” (it does). She went on to say that she had no idea how and with what items she would decorate a new living space and that’s when the rest of the story came out.

I’m pretty sure that full expression involves more than being in touch with your inner decorator. It seems to me that it is more than demonstrating or creating anything. Not contingent upon circumstance it is more about being fully present – no matter what.

What does it mean to you to live your life with Full Expression?
And how do you know when you are not?

In my reading recently I was reminded of the 10,000 hour tipping point of mastery, first introduced to most of us by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. For most of my life, personally and in the majority of my vocational pursuits I have been listening to people’s stories, a story listener. By studying Earth School lesson plans and reframing the stories about them I have also become a story weaver.

I have logged well over 10,000 hours in these pursuits.

The only way you can make a wrong step is to not put your foot down and move on. There are no mistakes only learning experiences.

The next step is not the last step. It is just the next step.

In recounting his journey through decades of arduous “life situation challenges, enduring numerous business and personal losses” a friend was told by his confidant, “You are a master survivor if there ever was one.” As he relayed the story to me my friend went onto say that he realized that was a valid observation. “I’ve become a Master Survivor, he added but somewhere along the way he said it seemed that he had “misplaced other self definitions: healer, helper, lover, entertainer, musician, creator.”

I’m not sure there are actual awards for achieving Master Survivor status but I congratulated him none-the-less on the important milestone. I suggested that he might be ready for a new Life course, Thriving. Some of its homework includes ferreting out those lost “other self definitions” and making the effort to wear one or more of them daily.

Which of your selves will you don today?

A “frame” is an apt name for our body. It frames our earthly experience.
But we are not the frame. We are the Life out picturing through it.

Multiple close friends are either in the sorting and packing stages of relocation or actively planning for a move to a new location. Another special friend recently returned from a year’s reinvention adventure. I have learned that distance in not always a function of geography and that intimacy transcends physical proximity.

 “Friendships are not measured by time or togetherness.
But by the time spent together, the thoughts when apart.”
~George Raeburn

 Friendships are portable.