Independence day

photo by Parker Fitzgerald

Last July I received an unexpected letter in the mail. I read it. The words inside that letter woke me up from a deep slumber that I'd unconsciously allowed to wash over me. Hard facts are known to do that. That letter forced me to ask questions that I knew I had been avoiding asking. Those questions forced me to hear answers that I knew I had been avoiding hearing. Those answers forced me to take account of how far from freedom I had traveled and for what?

People who are able to truly love do not lightly put their lover's lives in jeopardy. People who are able to love value their own lives, for the sake of their lovers, if not themselves.

That letter, a record of invisible actions and impulsive decisions, changed my life forever. Forever for the better. I asked, without shame: Are you able to love? If so, are you loving the things that you want to? What in your actions allows your love to be seen?  If nothing, is love really present? If not, why pretend?

The universe has a plan for me (and for you). Let it unfold. Feel it wash over you. There is beauty, light in even the darkest moment- can you see it? This is what freedom feels like. We are lucky to know that feeling.

If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.

Responsibility. Response Ability.  Is there a difference between being responsible and being response able?

In order to be responsible for one’s affairs or behaviors, inner or outer, one must have a response. The response is a result of being response able.  What we choose to do as a result of our responses is an ethical matter.  The ethical quality of the response is consciousness.  Are you behaving ethically when you take responsibility for your response?

We are not designed to have total control of our emotions.  Fight or flight.  The collective, the creator, the chemical have the ultimate reign over our emotional experience.  So, although becoming consciously responsible is a developmental process, it is not as much a matter of getting better at it as it is a matter of growing into it- becoming comfortable in our lack of control over our own fundamental experiences.   That is written in stone.  The meaning we choose to make of our responsivity is our conscious, responsible choice. Maintaining mindfulness even as the tsunami, the earthquake, the fire and the flood innundate us, inside and out, is the practice.  Responsibility is the outcome.