A Rich and Splendid Life

I have lived a Rich and Splendid life!

This is what I have realized tonight at 10:44 pm on Friday July 17, 2020.  How did I realize this, you ask?  How could I just realize this and not have known it all along?

I will tell you why I have not realized that I have had a good life. Because for a good portion of my life, I have been focused on what has been going wrong.  I have been focused on how to fix things.  First, I wanted to fix myself. Than I wanted to fix my marriage. Then my children, my job, and my life.  Then I wanted to fix the world for God’s sake!

When did I stop and take inventory on what has gone right in my life?  When did I stop and truly look at how I lived compared to how other people lived?  

I didn’t! I thought I was supposed to grow up and obey all the rules and be like everyone else. I didn’t think for a minute that maybe being a bit offbeat and doing things differently was the way I was supposed to live.  In fact, perhaps I am designed to live a quirky life.  Perhaps we are ALL designed to live in more creative ways than we are currently demonstrating. 

Here are the rules….  Go to school. Work hard. Go to college. Work harder.  Get a job. Work even harder.  Get married and have kids.  Work it all!  Be exhausted and wake up to do it all over again.

Where is the fun in that?  Where is the creativity in this life that we are all living?

I tell you where it is!  It is right under your nose!  And this is how I figured out that my crazy offbeat way of living my whole entire life has actually been AMAZING!  And I truly believe it has been the way we are designed to live.

From a young age, I have been a dreamer.  I have lived in the clouds and just marched to the beat of my own drum.  I know that every boyfriend I ever had saw this.  I will tell you also that every boyfriend I ever had delighted in this dance that I had with life.

This dance was my feminine essence flowing from what makes me happy to what makes me happier.  I have had this underlying “impulse” to do things my whole entire life.  Some people said I was ADHD, some people said I had impulse control issues, and yet others said I had free spirit. 

I believe it is the creative essence that lives in each and every one of us.  But we have been duped to believe we are just supposed to live these lives of boring anarchy.  

Phooey I say!  We are supposed to live lives of endless creative ecstasy!  We are supposed to design our lives to fit ourselves, not society.  We are supposed to become interested in things, one after another, and take pure delight in doing these things … just for the sheer pleasure of it! 

We should be doing things just for the stinking fun of it.  Seeking ideas and experiences just for the pure enjoyment of the idea and experience of itself is creative living!  This is life!  

When we follow what gives us pleasure, we are following the flow of life that is birthed from within our soul.

But we do not believe this.  We believe we must suffer.

So…here I am on a Friday night.  Following my spirit.  I am not out with my friends, or over at my boyfriend’s house, or watching tv.  I am reading a book … because honestly right now I cannot read enough books.  Reading these books I have chosen gives me SO much pleasure and delight lately that I just keep going with it!  I keep following the lead of what gives me deep joy and gratification.

So tonight I am reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.  And I am honestly IN LOVE with this book in a way that I have not been in love before.  The ideas she expresses here in her book give way to a part of me that I have never understood.  It allows me to feel normal because the words describe creatives and creative endeavors.  And I realize on one page, in one paragraph, ending in one sentence that my life has been EXACTLY perfect.  My life has been the epidomy of creative living.  

“You might spend your whole life following your curiosity and have absolutely nothing to show for it at the end — except one thing.  You will have the satisfaction of knowing that you passed your entire existence in devotion to the noble human virtue of inquisitiveness.  And that should be more than enough for anyone to say that they lived a rich and splendid life.”  This is what I read on p. 239 in Big Magic.

After I read those words, I see a snapshot of my life of creative bliss and realize that I have been mostly misunderstood. I have mostly misunderstood my own self. But I take pure pleasure in the memories of following my heart’s joy that may not have been very mainstream. Like standing outside in thunderstorms, climbing out my bedroom window in high school, buying and riding a motorcycle, taking my children camping for one night, riding a bicycle for 100 miles, running a marathon, traveling all over the world for a year…all just to know how it feels to be alive.

Follow your bliss.  Follow your joy.  Follow things that leave you squealing like a pig in delight!  Follow your little tiny impulses and go and try something new.  And follow your big beautiful dreams too!  But please, by all means…follow what truly brings you a feeling of amazement and wonder.  Let your curiosity lead you.

Then you too, at the end of it all, will say…I have lived a Rich and Splendid Life.