Wednesday, June 06, 2007Part IV – Authenticity Being out here in the world has been beyond great. I've been able to find my authenticity again which feels like a precious jewel. Here are some of the things I've learned the past few days: Love can come, and go, in a heartbeat. It can be as surprising and powerful as a locomotive powering through your front door at 8 in the morning. Or it can be soft like a meteor shower. But either way, it comes in little moments. Trying to ensnare it and force it to linger will only cause it to become the stuff of the brain and the calendar. Love, and its fleeting grace, is one of the best arguments for creating a practice of living in the moment. If you don't have those muscles working and toned, those shooting stars will fly by you all too quickly. It is truly a blessing to be able to live within your own rhythms. One of the best things of the last few days, as I've wandered solo about the island, is the ability to acknowledge when my body is tired… and then to sleep. It doesn't matter if it's two in the afternoon, two in the morning, whenever. Between jet lag and the high octane potency of Manhattan, I am careening between full-throttle forward and dead-weight eyelids. It's been great to just acknowledge the body's needs and deal with them as they arise. It's all about authenticity. One morning last weekend I woke up to a Cat Stevens' song – the one from Harold and Maude. "If you want to be free, be free…. If you want to be you, be you…. there's a million ways to be… you know that there are." And since I was in one of my favorite places in the world, and receptive to change, and breathing the air of books and smart funny literate people… I heard the lyrics down in my core. And I thought – well, why not? Why not decide… right here and now… to just … be… me? Just be me. Not more, not less. Not me + all the way the various people in my life see me. Not me + my job and my responsibilities and my lists and my obsessive crap. Not even me + my work. Just… me. It takes some mental gymnastics to get to a place of being "just me." Dunno about you, but for me there's some barnacle-scraping that has to go on for me to get to a "just me" state. And – with the ability to pay attention for a few days about nothing but my own little life requirements – I'm starting to see the things that create calluses on my soul that deaden my ability to touch and to feel. What I need -- what we all need I guess -- are touchstone people and activities (and non-activities) to keep us authentic. To keep the barnacles from growing too thick. The dealings of daily life start to blanket us with a veneer of details that sometimes cover us up completely. Underneath their weight we get small, we stop being able to breathe, we start fading and diminishing. We all know who the people are who keep us honest. When I get back, I want to be more with them and less with the barnacle-inducers. Also, there are activities that help – like gardening, and yoga, and baking, and keeping spaces in your day to just do nothing. It's important. So if you want to be free, be free. If you want to be you, be you. And when those meteor showers come, just open your arms and let them rain down on you. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 6:11 PM  
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