“There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called yesterday and the other is tomorrow. Today is the right day to love, believe, do, and mostly live”
(Dahli Lama XIV)
A Best-Lived Life Won’t Fit in Designer Box
No matter how well constructed, or artistically designed – a box is a box.
Through personal observation, I have uncovered two culprits that keep most people living small lives. I should probably define a small life before pressing on.
Small lives, in my view, are gifts of unlimited potential, dimension, color, texture, and opportunity that are squeezed into a mold that someone else has lived, or wanted to live. (Far too small for you!) Small lives rob human beings who have survived centuries of oppression, disease, and disaster of their inherent grandeur.
Our Inestimable Design
Human beings are exquisite designs of infinity. We mirror the composition of the heavens – the stars, the planets, the galaxies.
30,000,000,000,000 – that is thirty trillion unique cells make up your body’s composition. Your magnificent heart will beat about 100,000 times today. You possess enough blood veins to encircle the entire globe. And that’s just facts about your body. What if we talk about the power of your mind or the mystery of all that is “spirit” you?
So a small life is any life – rich or poor, male or female or both, educated or ignorant, tribal or urban – that limits itself to someone else’s dream.
(Front of Card)
The Two Culprits
So who stuffs us in the boxes and insists that we fit? Who is demanding that we be contained?
It starts with you and me. We do it to ourselves. It happens somewhere from childbirth – where the world is alive and fresh and we are so curious – until we get to grade school and we begin self-contorting. In my young life, I wanted to escape my reality so I mirrored my life after the Brady Brunch (the original I might add!) Before I knew the multiplication tables, I knew how to be someone else. They looked like they knew how to do life. So my box looked a lot like the box that the Brady family created, right down to my coffee cup elegantly served with a saucer!
Of course, you don’t need me to tell you, it gets worse from there. The older we get the smaller the box. Play Safe. Ordinary. Small. Responsible. In fact, on second thought – don’t play at all!
If You Don’t Have a Plan for Your Life, Don’t Worry, Someone Does
We capture our precious lives and bury them alive in boxes that look a lot like coffins. And if you are feeling quite secure at the moment, discerning that I speak of someone other than you, no worries! If you won’t silence your magic -someone else will do it for you. People who care about you will outline their plans for your future. Competitors will do their best to force us to be small so they can try to feel large. Some teachers, often frustrated with the day-to-day grind and lacking the energy to invest in “spectacular,” encourage our “passing lives” like passing grades – as if life could be graded on a curve of ordinary. Even our spiritual leaders – or especially them, tell us to think less of ourselves and think more of others.
But can we think more of others when we know who we are; astonishing, shocking, astounding – breathtaking, startling, stupefying? We are a mix of the brightest of light and the shadows that haunt them. We are sinners and saints.
No Box is Big Enough for the Unfolding Soul
It won’t be tidy, orderly, and predictable. Rather a well-lived life will be interrupted by fate, disturbed my heartache, and sidetracked by passion. Like the peanut butter and jam that leaks from the sides of a well-appointed sandwich leaving a mess all over your face, the essence of life will overflow its banks and get snarled up in entanglements. Each snare is a hidden gem sent to remind you of the mystery of life in you.
Simplicity
Your smallest acts are the doors to your greatest gifts. The unseen lives of those who serve isolated immigrants, war-scarred refugees, failed businesspeople, physically disabled professionals, day-care workers, shut-ins, and elderly folks who barely move every day – these lives are not containers they are vessels.
But such a grand gesture need not define a well-lived life. Perhaps you’ll experience the silent “knowing” of the butterfly, a nod to the rain as she falls in a hurry, or a sudden urge to call someone you just thought of with a trust you are doing the right thing at the right time. Life is yours to live richly, in deep gratitude for all that is, with compassion for yourself and your neighbor – near or far.
Your spacious gift of grace – of ecstatic awareness, is yours to enjoy and foster – inside your soul and outside the box.
Silent Memo Card Selections
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Best Lived Life
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Best Lived Life Back
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