Category: Uncategorized (Page 1 of 5)

Five years ago last night I felt sick. I was eating dinner and felt a wave of dizziness hit me. I excused myself from dinner and went to lay down.

Five years ago today, I woke up feeling dizzy and not quite myself. I helped some people move some heavy boxes down some steps, and had to steady myself going back up them. I thought I had an ear infection, or a sinus infection, or just some flu that was making me feel tired, dizzy and unstable on my feet.

Five years ago this afternoon I was convinced not to fly back to New Jersey from St. Louis, but to take a “road trip” since I wasn’t feeling well. The discussion seemed odd given the time it would take to drive back to New Jersey, and the time Heather would need to drive back. But she insisted, and I was feeling too sick to disagree. I could only look back now and understand it was a conversation that likely saved my life.

Five years ago tonight I was heading back from St. Louis to New Jersey in a Jeep Wrangler on a highway instead of at 35,000 feet when I felt a strange feeling of numbness cross my face. I then loss all ability to control my arm and leg, and immediately asked to be taken to an emergency room, an emergency room that was minutes, not hours, away.

Why?”

“Because I’m having a stroke.”

Five years ago my life changed forever. In the ensuing weeks I would be told by doctors and physical therapists what I would not be able to do, what I could not do, and what I would need to accept as “the new normal”. I was told not to expect too much, and that recovery would be a “marathon, not a sprint.” I would be told to slow down and to lower my expectations. I would be made to feel like all I could expect out of life would be blindness, a walker or a wheelchair, and a slow recovery to whatever functionality I could find.

My intuition told me something else. My heart demanded more, and my mind decided to heed that those voice instead of those I did not know. I went at my own pace, doing things no one had instructed me to do. Soon, I was doing things they said I couldn’t do. Then I was doing more than they thought possible. Then I was ready for the next phase of my recovery.

Given my condition, I was told I’b be in the hospital for a month. I was discharged after 10 days, and headed to an inpatient rehab facility. I could not see, and needed assistance walking, but I knew something inside of me was stirring. I was ready. I was able. I would make the best use of this recovery possible. I would use this time to learn a new way of living and of looking at life. I would learn that every challenge I faced up until that moment on a highway, every success and every failure, had prepared me . Honestly, I used every bit of my life’s experience to recover, and every bit of my recovery to enhance my life’s experience.

Today, my life is much different than it was 5 years ago. I’ve mostly recovered save some bouts of instability on the rocks I hike on and some worry whenever I feel physically “off”. I still have issues heading down the trail, but it’s not like it was. The biggest change has been a positive one – that fire born inside me 5 years ago today has never left.  I know who I am. I understand the code I live by. I don’t relinquish my power often to the fear the shouts at me from every angle. Instead, I hear the voice within me whisper and I heed it’s encouragement.

And I never relinquish my power to another human being. I never readily agree to the limitations they wish to place on me. I let those lines they draw in the proverbial sands be lines they adhere to, but not lines I use as my own. I make my own agreements in my own way, and I never surrender to fear that does not agree with my inner voice. Fear pretends to be a voice within when in reality it is nothing more than someone else’s voice pretending to be my own.

Being strong is easy when you are sitting in your comfort zone, sipping on your favorite drink watching others charge up hills around you. Finding your weakness is easy when your world is falling apart and the certainty of your reality is in question. There is, however, nothing like being strong in the whirlpool of your weakness and of finding your fortitude in the muck that wants to to quit the race. I’m not sure that is what I did, but it sure felt that way.

Five years ago last night I started to lose it all.

Five years ago today everything was lost to the certainty of my mortality.

Five years ago tomorrow I discovered the truth.

What if today, right now, we stopped what we’ve been doing? What if we halted our traditional Monday practice, dead in its tracks, and did something new?

What if you just sat for one second and dreamed of what you’d be doing if you had followed your passion? What would that look like? Who would you be? What would you be doing? Would Monday be then what it is to you now?

What if we threw caution to the wind — gave ourselves to love, to hope, to potential and to possibility? What if the affirmations we’ve grown aaccustomedto reading and citing actually became a statement of intention instead of graffiti on the walls? What if we aimed to be next to our heart’s mate, recognizing the gift and breath of life in each act of surrender until, finally, the Divine in me actually bowed to the Divine in you? More importantly, what if our Divinity recognized itself in the eyes of our beloved to the point where It bowed not just to Itself in each other, but the very core of It in ourselves?

Namaste.

I am a man who certainly understands my own mortality. I understand yours as well. Some may say I overstate our end, that I focus on it a bit too much. I say I just understand it and the very finite amount of time I have to live this life. I want to cherish each moment and not waste one drop of the sweet juice of life. I don’t want to spill this drink on the ground. Wasting such nectar on soil that cannot taste its wonder, cannot enjoy or savor its sweetness, seems to be throwing away an oasis in the desert. When you are dying of thirst, and in most of our cases that thirst is for life itself, every drop of juice is precious. I simply have no desire to wait until I am dying of thirst to recognize the preciousness of life. Nor do I wish to wait until my final breath to recognize my own potential.

Things must change if I wish to fulfill not only my own visions but also quench my thirst for life. I have dedicated myself to living the life I so desire, in a way I desire it, so that when I breathe my last I have no regrets, no inhibitions, and no wishes for things to be different. I want to look into her eyes and know I’ve loved her to my fullest, that I’ve given a part of myself fully to the endeavor of love, to the demands of life, in the fulfillment of my own passions and zest for life.

In that respect, this Monday is unlike any other in recent memory. I’ve seen the future in visions, tasted the potential as it swirled in a chalice before me and I want it. My heart is vibrating with the knowledge that this is possible. My soul screams, this is not only possible, but necessary. My Being sings, you’ve been prepared, now get to it. My mind is rife with fear, with uncertainty, but my heart is steadfast in its determination.

My life changes right now. Today. This second. Come with me. Envision your truth and make it real.

If I am to struggle, let me struggle in the realization of my truth not in the quest to meet the definitions of others. If I am to work hard, let it be while I bathe in my own passion so that I may swim to a shore of my own choosing. If I am to spill my guts to the world, let it be as a light for whomever is in need of a torch along their path. Let it be my passion that lights the way so that I am never lost again.

In the stillness of a humid Florida morning, I was blessed with a vision. I know it to be a true destination if I choose the path to it. Of course, I will have to walk the path, face its challenges, climb its fallen rocks and stumble on its scree to arrive, but arrive I will. I am done waiting, wanting, wishing and hoping. I now begin doing.

I hope you share with the world what you envision in your passion, and what you dream to be while basking in that glow even if it is not yet time for you to begin that journey. Walk with me, with us, toward that horizon even if at your own pace. We may not wait up for you, and ask you not to wait up for us, but you will the footprints before you and those you leave behind as inspiration enough.

This is truly exciting. Now, onward to the day!

∞

After the dawn, a lovely shower from the night’s rains fall from the stilled palms strewn about our haven. I hear the morning birds singing off in the distance, and wonder what the night held for them. Life continues all around me, even in the moments when my heart does nothing but dream of you. Perhaps that is life for me. If it is I beg the Universe that brought the rains, made way for the morning sun, and gave the birds a voice in the chorus of life to let me live. Let me love. Make this life worth the effort it took to survive.

I close my eyes, not to erase the view that lays before me but to capture it. I wish to ingrain that moment in my heart’s storied pages and not lose it to another. Born a twin to the masterpiece before me is the feeling that inundates my Being. My soul’s sweet rapture, my life’s summit, my surly beach with unending sand and a perfect horizon is realized in the moment when my eyes have opened to the sunrise, and my soul to the harmony of all that stirs around me. There is your name, my love. It seems there has always been your name.

Before I knew your name it had many forms. I once called you “impossible” in honor of that moment when I saw no hope in finding you. I knelt before frozen gods feeling nothing but the cold, never realizing that just beyond their altars there was a warmth. A warmth that was to be my destiny.

I once called you a “dream”. I would find you twirling in my slumber, laughing at the music you heard while your dance shook dandelion seeds from their nests. I could hear the softness of your feet on the hardened ground I trampled on and I wished, I prayed, that one day I would have the rhythm to dance with you. If only I had the courage to meet you where you were.

I once called you “hope”. Through the darkness of my nights, I would pray for your star to rise above my horizon. I would look for you as I navigated my lonely seas, longingly begging for my compass to point me home. When the storms raged I wished to wipe away the clouds to find you way out there, in the distant darkened sky and would pray either for survival or a quick end. When the end seemed near something would ignite within me, and I would feel you, and I would continue on until…

I once called you “possible”. In a life where the impossible was often realized, when life was gifted in the face of certain death,when a left turn meant demise, I would feel the tug of something pulling me to the right. If a breath was possible in the face of drowning, you were possible on any lonely sea. If steps could once again be rooted in this sweet earth after losing the trueness of my footing then you were possible in a world made unreal by life’s insanity. I would find you. Even if not in this lifetime I would honor a promise I made to you hundreds of years ago. I had no choice. It is my destiny.

Then I called you “love”. I waited for you to come down from heaven, stride through the threshold, and hold me in the arms I’ve missed over several lifetimes. Afraid though I was, I could only surrender to the truth of us, the monumental occasion promised to us a forever ago. I was a helpless babe in the winds of the Universe blown into your arms, a sea turtle caught in love’s sweet current who has surrendered to the net you had cast.

Now I call you by name. Sometimes that name is “impossible”, sometimes it is “my dream”. Other times it is “hope”, and in others it is “possible”. But always, no matter what words seems to fit the moment we find ourselves in, “love” is appropriate and honored. You are my great love, and you were all I have risen to discover.

I am here, loving, wanting, your partner until…

Forever.