Life on the edge

Some say life begins on the edge of your comfort zone. It just seems that when you step off the ledge of the life you have such a tight grip on and let go, fully expecting to fall and self destruct, that's when life begins. Maybe because that's when you find yourself praying as if your life depended on it, because it does.  That's when you seek the kingdom of God and that's when you find It.

If that's true, that life begins on the edge of your comfort zone,  then it must take an awful lot of courage to live.  I wonder when it was that we dove into the system, was it after high school, college or fifth grade.  When did we take the high dive, plunging into the thick of it, never to surface, never to embrace the thrill, challenge and even sheer terror of living our lives outside the box, without an agenda.  

What if we didn't live "purpose driven lives,"  what if we just winged it, didn't plan for ambitious careers, or strived our whole lives away to make a lot of money, even putting some away for retirement - if we live long enough to retire?  What if we learned in elementary school and high school, how to meditate - not within any particular religious dogma - but how to center our minds, explore the cosmos from within an interior lens?  What if we taught the children real, honest to God non-violent confrontation skills, how to manage their center when confronted by someone who is angry rather than reacting with hostility?  What if we really taught peace rather than stirring up their lowest violent natures in combative sports events?  Aren't the interscholastic football games, mini wars?  Aren't they teaching competition, violence, strength of the will, strategy and strength of the body to overcome the "enemy?" What if Math and science were electives and art and music were requirements?  (although I think math and science are important) When the school system has to cut its budget, music and art are usually the first to go.  So, we forget about the need for poets and artists and musicians in our culture, but we keep the sports team! 

When did you last step out from under the canopy of your comfort zone and do something really original?  If you are in a care taking role, when did you do something that really matches your own inner integrity?  When was the last time you really laughed with enjoyment, sang in the rain, went for a moonlight walk at 3 a.m.?  When was the last time you went swimming in the lake?  There are so many things we stop doing when we grow up and then we don the mantle of adulthood which is as heavy as hell and drag that thing all through our lives, completely by rote.  It is so sad.  It makes me so sad that so many people do this.  

Maybe I should tell you a little bit about me.  I broke out of the system a couple years ago.  In truth, I didn't really mean to break out, but I realized I didn't fit in anymore.  I grieved that for a long time, feeling that I had to force my round peg in the world's square hole.  Now, I love this life I live. When I do return to a real job, it will allow me to be authentic and it will be a mutual love affair.  Lately, as I reflect on my move out west and think of returning east where things are more linear and left -brained, something inside me feels like I can't clip my wings that small again.  These two years of searching, dreaming, meditating, praying and encountering the divine, have only made me even less marketable in the world's system.

And then, sometimes I think it would all be different if I went back because I'm different.  Or, maybe, I'll join an ashram and spend the rest of my life writing and meditating and living on mangos and rice ... Seriously, that's where the terror comes in and it is exactly in that space, which is a deep chasm really,  between who I was and who I am becoming that is the hardest to embrace, but you come to the point - like teetering on the edge of the high diving board - that there's only one way to go and that's over.  

It takes a kind of courage I never knew I had.  I've always had a wild streak of non-conformity in me, but I never dreamed I would come to this place of such utter stark authenticity, where I would die before I would trade in this life for something false and materialistic.  I think if I had a mortgage and bank loans, I would let them go into default before I would default on myself, my essence, and subvert my soul to the regimen of ordinary life.

So as I invite you on Tiger Lilies' journey, I am not asking you to take the high dive, but I am asking you to find and step into your joy and maybe - if you have the courage - to also to step out from under the heavy mantle you let the status quo heave over you.  

Last year when I was working as a chaplain at a local hospital, I met a man who was homeless.  As we talked about his life on the streets, I asked him if he had a plan to get his old life back, seek employment, find a home, live the American life again.  Evidently an educated man, he was articulate and wise in his own way, he said, fervently,  "never."  He had learned how to survive on very little, had friends and had a life and didn't want to go back to work as a slave to the system.  I was surprised.  I'd only met one person - back in Buffalo - who had the courage to do that.  Now, I am not advocating homelessness, yet I am advocating stepping off the treadmill of your life, look at your joy meter in your life and seek to live in that joy.  Take more time for your own heart, see if you can even feel it anymore, under all the layers of responsibilities and obligations you've piled over it.

Go swimming, dance in the rain, laugh at the angry drivers who are in such a hurry to do what?  to go where?  Where does any one of us have to get to but right here?  Right where you are is where you need to be.  Smile, you are loved,  now feel it and live like you know it.