This time last week, I was a changed woman, transformed by participating in a remarkable event ~ the CSA Conference on Positive Aging. It lifted me up to a new level of awareness appreciation engagement.
A week later - now - my challenge is making ACTION one of my responses, to accept that following through with constructive action is where awareness appreciation engagement are meant to lead.
Realizing that awareness without action still serves as my brain heart soul default is sobering. Only Spirit is standing there, arms akimbo, looking at me & saying, "Are you kidding me? Are you KIDDING me? You experienced three perspective-shifting days ~ with a 4th thrown in for good measure ~ and you still stop short of letting them be LIFE-changing? You do get that the whole reason for the perspective shift is to get to the lift change - right?"
Spirit gets exasperated with me. It sees, as the others don't, that the reason for shelling out all the money time energy required to go to the D.C. conference - attendance plus transportation plus lodgings plus meals - was not for my entertainment or other edification. It was to gain new insights, learn different angles, get fresh perspectives & inspiration in working with & advocating for olders elders ancients; to get moving even more decisively in the direction of a long overdue overhaul of our culture's abysmal attitudes around edging our way upward in years.
It's a shock to realize how strongly well-informed inactivity & energetic dithering still feels to me like actually doing something.
It feels like my biggest, most determined gremlin specializes in buttressing resistance. While I am pleased with the fact of actually getting some work done, it's sobering to realize that it's the teensiest fraction of what calls to be done. I applaud those actions, because they are a triumph, and am giving that gnarly resistance gremlin notice to prepare for more in the future.
One of the ways that pesky gremlin has of turning intentions into flat nothingness is through the sense of time that was entrenched in my life through my mother, only sister & oldest brother - aka the three most dominant influences in my pre-John life. (Much as I adore & admire my hubster, he has an artist's Dali-esque view of time.)
The best way to describe my core family's view of time is through describing wash day. We didn't have a washing machine in our house, which meant lugging baskets of laundry to a local wash-a-teria. But the weather had to be just right - not too beautiful, not too wet.
If the day was too beautiful, Mom would say, "It's too fine a day to do the wash - let's go for a drive." If it was raining, she would say, "We can't go today - the clean clothes will get wet." An overcast day with no forecast of showers - that was our ideal wash day.
One thing I have to remember is that Mom's approach to wash day never made sense to her baby girl. It seemed to me that a sunny, blue sky day was perfect for doing a wash & dry. As for getting the clean clothes wet - just cover each basket over with a clean sheet & then dry the sheets on our outdoor clothesline or, if it was nasty weather, on the one in the utility room.
It's important that I remember how her thinking always seemed off-kilter to me, but I didn't say anything because a) I was a kid & b) when I grew older & the one driving her to & from the laundrymat, I'd rather do something else, too.
Now, it is essential to reconnect with that younger self who thought it was looney tunes to wait for mediocre conditions to do something that needed doing NOW, who thought, "If it needs doing, doing it."
Resistance to DOING the right thing at the right time in the right way is wrapped so snuggly around me, it feels normal. What's important to know about that is that acting differently, especially acting effectively, will feel ABnormal (which it is) & wrong - but Spirit will keep going until its right messaging is processed & perched in brain heart soul.
To get to where Spirit wants me to join it means working through & past a sense of "This isn't right! This isn't the way things are meant to be - STOP!"
It's letting that younger me say, "This is a beautiful day to do the right thing at the right time in the right way - you go, girl!"
It means opening a door into a new dimension of time & energies & blissed action.
