The Idea Blog

For those who know me well, this has been somewhat of a mantra for me these past 6 months. The more tangible evidence or outcome of this intention has probably been reflected in my travels this summer — which have taken me to Northern California for a week on a Buddhist-Christian Silent Meditation Retreat and across the Atlantic to spend a week in Prague, CZ with my oldest daughter and my mother. But it is the internal struggle for expansiveness in living that has me captivated.

It’s so easy to bob along living life by the same prescription from day to day and not recognize that we are doing just that. Early this year I came face to face — again — with this obstacle I recognize well in my own life. I’ll spare any reader the details of my personal angst over this, but I resolved to try and do something to push back the walls of my own “life” box — to view the world with a wider lens and make decisions more from my heart and less from my head — and then, to see what might happen. Well, to be honest, it wasn’t easy and it didn’t feel comfortable from the very start! But, I’m surviving and, I think, living just a little more expansively than I was 6 months ago.

What I learned? Whew! I was able to spend some money I didn’t feel I could (should). I gave voice to a dream to travel with my mother sometime before it might no longer be possible — and the dream became a reality. I spent a week held in the embrace of towering redwoods and a community of fellow pilgrims, and I remembered pieces of myself that I feared had wandered off forever.