What it takes to walk your path

Time flies they say, slips through your fingers… and it does, one moment at a time. I have lived under this flawed notion that if I could just “solve” the challenges that were presented each day, then everything would be ok. But while I did that, the things that I loved, the things that I thought were “constant”, were slipping away. Where we put our attention, is how we see the world and experience it. I chose to take the world very seriously, put so much pressure on myself, focus on what needed to be “solved”. My phrase, “I am not an amateur”, unconsciously carrying so much weight….

Maybe we don’t “choose” how we see the world, we get it from our parents, from our grandparents, from our experiences, our circumstances. Those early crucial years shape our views of the world and help create our realities. In order to survive we must belong and to belong, we adapt. The problem is that most of us continue unknowingly carrying those mandates and views of the world for the remainder of our life. We might have a feeling that something is off, we might feel stuck, unhappy, but never imagine that the answers could lie within us.

I wish I could say one day I was enlightened…..but it would be far from true. It took a cancer diagnosis, two moves, loosing my farm, and a pandemic to make me stop and listen. What I have learned is that we do have a choice and a responsibility to ourselves, to sift through what is ours and what is not. I realized that if I was to become my own person, I would have to go through what Bert Hellinger called “bad conscience”. Each family has unwritten rules on what is “good” or “bad” and we have been immersed in that reality. To go against that, makes us feel badly about ourselves. It is so difficult to go against it because it threatens our most basic need, which is to belong.

Being an adult is much more than just about our age. It is being able to go through what it takes to walk away from what does not serve us, with the outmost respect to those who came before us. This is not about “boundaries” which are built out of fear of being hurt. This is about doing the inner work to look at everyone and everything through a new healing angle, honoring it, making a space in our hearts for everything, the “good” and the “bad”. Being an adult is to stop waiting for things to happen, for things or for people to change. It is about giving ourselves the permission to go towards our own life. An adult can do that because in their heart they know that everyone belongs, no matter what.

When we are able to “choose differently”, not because we think we are better, but from a deep humility and thankfulness towards those that came before us, we become whole. Knowing that no matter what happened, we are here today because someone did something right, even if it was just giving us life. Only then are we are able to go towards our life with the strength that comes from our ancestors. And as we pave new paths and choose differently, we create new colorful branches for our family tree.