A New Year, A New Vision.

For the past couple of years, I have been orienting my year around a theme. A couple of years ago it was my Donkey Yote (not to be confused with Don Quixote) HeHaW (Health & Harmonic Wealth) tour with me and my ass in search of the answer to life, the universe and everything (in honour of turning 42).

And this year, my theme has been Truth or Dare: 2009 Edition - Game On! It's been a ton of fun thinking about my week ahead and choosing - Truth or Dare? More often than not this year, I have chosen Dare, if only because that is what I used to do in my tween days of playing Truth or Dare.

Admittedly, my dares have not been large. I didn't end up taking up pole dancing or the circus arts or really risking boldly. Sometimes just daring myself to stay in the game or mingle with others, or go yet one more intrepid mile each week felt audacious enough.

But I did take a couple of risks. Holy Hub and I renewed our wedding vows in Hawaii, in celebration of 25 years together. And I travelled back home to Alberta road-trip style, something I was not wont to do. While there, I went to see a renowned forensic psychic - in order to get at the hidden truth behind my niece's suicide this spring. And on the way home, I dared go zipline'ing with the kids and do a 10 am scary roller coaster after a big breakfast. Terrifying and stomach-lurching experiences, both - but fun, nonetheless. And I dared myself to step up and write a business plan for a wilderness education company - an industry sector I previously knew next to nothing about. I did this in exchange for sending my 13-year old son on their Coming of Age rite of passage expedition for boys next summer.

Choosing truth, on the other hand, has meant telling myself the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about things I'd quite frankly rather not. It's meant being honest in my beingness instead of living the myriad little lies that can tend to add up to big ones if I'm not careful.

Sometimes those truths have meant saying no, giving up on things and bringing myself back to a place of integrity. At other times, it's meant being willing to really stand alone with myself in front of a bathroom mirror behind a locked door, and allow myself to ask my silent question and nod my head in affirmation or shake my head in disagreement. I have tried, above all this year to channel to the good bard in living the mantra - This above all, to thine own self be true.

And it hasn't always been easy. I had occasion to stumble, once again, upon a poem a month or so ago. I read it with new eyes and this time, it really resonated with me. Perhaps because I am not always so especially good at living at that most authentically honest level where things are raw and real.

"We live a lie when we misrepresent the reality of our experience or the truth of our being. I am living a lie when I pretend a love I do not feel; when I pretend an indifference I do not feel; when I present myself as more than I am; when I say I am angry, and the truth is I am afraid; when I pretend to be helpless, and the truth is I am manipulative; when I deny or conceal my excitement about life; when I affect a blindness that denies my awareness; when I affect a knowledge I do not possess; when I laugh when I need to cry; when I spend unnecessary time with people I dislike; when I present myself as the embodiment of values I do not feel or hold; when I am kind to everyone except thos I profess to love; when I fake beliefs to win acceptance; when I fake modesty; when I fake arrogance; when I allow my silence to imply agreement with convinctions I do not share." Nathaniel Branden

Packed into this mumbo-jumbo of words is some powerful truth of what it means to be human and at times, arguably, inhuman. I suspect it didn't resonate with me the first two times I took those words in, perhaps because I chose NOT to take the words in and hear many of them as my truth.

So it's been an interesting year, to say the least. I approached 2009 thinking Dares would be where it was at, when in fact, Truth is what has really seemed to define it.

And I'm OK with that. On my painted and decorated garden stake, which served as my anchor and office talisman for my theme this year, I had decoupaged a number of quotes about the notions of both Truth and Dare. One, in particular, stands out to me now.

"The Truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off."

It makes me chuckle but also smile at a deep and cheerful level, because the truth of my being HAS really pissed me off. And to borrow from one of the year's most redundant quotes, it is what it is...

Which leads me to next year's theme. I have decided I need to back up and really sit with my beingness and embrace the present, all the while, planning for the future. So I've come up with Plan Be! as my 2010 theme. It is a reminder for me to stay grounded in the present whilst remaining methodical in strategic planning mode.

The Be also allows the word nerd in me to bring all those other juicy Be words into the realm. You know....like begin and become and bequeath and bestow and believe and behoove and beacon and beauty and beckon and bedazzle and befriend and behold and bejewel and belay and better and bestseller and bevvy and bewitch.

And as would befit the Plan part of the Be, I've decided to attach some further BEatitudinal theming to the months, in order to assign some kind of virtuous purpose and character building to my year.  As such, my months translate to Begin, Believe, Beyond, Belong, Befriend, Beauty, Beacon, Benevolent, Beatnik, Bestseller, Beget and Bestow.

It is, in essence, a year of being and doing bundled into one rhetorical package.  To be or not to be - that will remain the question. Perhaps at the end I will discover, as the ancient philosophers did, that "to be is to do".  I may well discover instead that, in fact, it's reversed and that "to do is to be." 

And my 2010 theme song? You guessed it: Let it Be. :) It speaks words of wisdom.

Blessed be. Shalom. Amen.

Summertime and the Blogging Ain't Easy....

It must be summer because I have nothing to rant about. Even when there is so much to rant about - local traffic woes with a vital section of our local Interstate limited to a couple of lanes, the mortgage industry going to pot, and the frustrating reality that the sun has been playing hide and seek with us Pacific Northwesters all summer. It knows some dang good spots behind some major, honking cumulus clouds, too, it would seem.

But today, the sun sloths on its sky blue blanket, begging to be worshipped. The kids are happy, except when they're not, which is when they're yelling and screaming and arguing over who hates who more. And the bastard beagles behind us, who snort grass like it's in pretty green lines going out of style, are barking. Again. Still. Always. Forever.

So it's little surprise than it all this cacophony and disquiet of the season, I have nothing of consequence to blog about.

Like as though I ever did, so I don't know what the big deal is. Like I need some monumental bee to get stuck in my bonnet to step up on my soapbox and shout out to the world. So in the spirit of paradox, today I'm stepping up to the mic to yell hello to the universe and see if it murmurs back at me.

Nothing monumental. Not bent out of shape about the political, economic, religious or social state of internal or external affairs near or far. God knows, I could be....the world is going to hell in a handbasket - metaphor speak for earthly raison d'etre, I suppose - it just seems be permastuck on the downwards track of the roller coaster more so of late, is all.

Which is where I was yesterday, finally enjoying myself on the local roller coasters without the usual fear and looming death imaginings that accompany such joy rides for me post-motherhood. I took a friend's five year old daughter on her first big roller coaster rides - corkscrew turns, upside loops, the whole enchilada. And she was afraid, very afraid. I'm not very good at alleviating such rational fears so I did the only thing I knew to comfort her. I lied and told her the rides weren't really very scary at all. Which wasn't really a lie if you consider one's mindset post ride. Fears aren't scary anymore once you've confronted them. So of course, after the fact, she wanted to ride both roller coasters again. And again. I created a monster yesterday. But she's a cutie patootie with beautiful green eyes and long curlie eyelashes and a brave one at that.

So it was no biggie after all. Big schmig. Today I'm in a schmidt happens kinda mood. As in don't sweat the small, big or medium schtuff. I have no desire to do, strive, achieve but rather just to be today, with no conjunction junction station whistle stop or ultimate place towards which to follow the verbal auxiliary and irregularity of that which is the most slippery and passive of verbs.

"Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself."
Zen Saying

Speaking of Zen wisdom, I just finished a book called The Zen Commandments. I highly recommend it. It's not Zen (the author is actually a Dzogchen student) and it's not even decidedly eastern in thought (Sluyter includes numerous quotes from Western traditions) but it does offer a universal fountain of wisdom in the simplest of language all reduced into one surprisingly slim volume. And he serves it with a golden tea cup, should you choose to drink from the fountain yourself, offers a twist of orange for those who like things sweet, and doctors it with more than a few drops of humor. Because while life itself is a serious game, playing at it needs not be.

To sum up that sentence, and his whole book and philosophy, for that matter, simply delete all words except the last one. The rest is clutter, fluff, schtuff, and schmidt to ponder and confound.

Which is perhaps why Shakespeare penned his most famous of rhetorical musings. It is, after all, the quintessential question and the answer is deceptively simple.

That said, at that very same place today you will find me. In the spirit of why do today what one can foreseeably put off until tomorrow, I'm guessing tomorrow or the day after that, etc., etc., is soon enough to get bent out of shape about the world and its ways.

Námas te.