Sunday, June 16, 2019

Hooker Line Proves Profound; Pretty Woman Pretty Smart After All




Summer is finally here and the longer days are consuming more of my time outdoors and in the garden. I don’t want to waste a second when there is so much living to do…and for maybe the first time in my life, writing has taken a backseat to the actual insights of living being served up every day. I’ve used pictures instead for fear I might miss out on something if I took the time to write it down.

I’ve been on a bit of a bender lately (minus the booze…well okay, a little bourbon goes well with most things) and have learned that it really isn’t about what challenges you face in life. It has everything to do with what you consider a challenge. And finding my way had more to do with realizing I was already exactly where I needed to be and not in need of a roadmap as to which direction to take.

There is a little bit of Dorothy (by way of the Good Witch Glenda’s observation), a dash of Mary Poppins, and yes…even the character portrayed by Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

I reached a resting point recently after waking up one day to find I had a completely different view of the world I’ve lived in for most of my adult life. I wish I could tell you what changed, but it was so subtle. I wasn’t holding my mouth right (old fishing saying for when the fish aren’t biting and one that a friend has coined often). It used to bug me to hear it. Never made sense. It was too simplistic in explaining how an activity or event did not net the expected results. And it pissed me off to boil it down to something that had no substance or tangible explanation I could sink my teeth into. Because really…I’ve been a gal that needs to find deep meaning and reason in every single thing. And stuff that doesn’t make sense has been quite the Achilles heel for me. To keep order in my life, I needed to be able to rationalize the “why” behind every aspect of my life. WTF was my past response. I now must concede that it is indeed that simple and complex all at once. Living life with this ecosystem proved exhausting for me. Another phrase I used to detest was “it is what it is.” I have also come to appreciate this as sound guidance for various points in my life where my sheer will to make something happen would have been so much better served to accept and keep going. And as I sit and write this now, I can see that I’m making up for lost time and likely going too long and too deep to keep anyone entertained and interested to the end.

I’ve been on a road trip for a while now. What most don’t realize, though, is my particular journey was unique in that it required me to take the journey standing still. Instead of searching outwardly through experiences and living, I became an observer of pretty much everything I encountered. I also had to have a willingness to put up a white board and erase all past foundational belief systems (including societal norms and expectations).

Having come full circle in deconstructing the life I once lived, I am at the crossroads where I must choose where I take it from here. It’s a little bit of “You’ve had the answer all along” from Glenda, and a twist of “It was here all along in my own backyard” from Dorothy. Throw Mary Poppins in the mix with an innate ability to spin anything negative into a positive and you can pretty much sum up who I am and where I’ve been.

Life didn’t change me nearly as much as I thought it had. In fact, I think life is the constant we all work with. We are the lens that reacts and reflects what we see (sometimes through filters we don’t even know exist). Life doesn’t discriminate. We are all equals in what we start with at the very beginning…that is to say we get this life, we are born, and we find our way.

I’ve learned that working with life and following a natural flow is far better than swimming against the current and denying whatever current reality I am in the middle of.

The final observation comes from admitting that there are people in my life, who simply don’t “get” me any longer. And that’s okay. It’s also proven far easier to simply let go than to try to rationalize my chosen path. That brings me to the final comparison, which is the hooker, who Julia Roberts played in Pretty Woman. Richard Gere stops and asks her for directions and she tells him it will cost him. Indignant, he says she can’t charge him for directions. And in true form of someone who is comfortable in her own skin, she simply says, “I can do anything I want. I ain’t lost.” Kudos to Roberts for delivering that line and ‘nuff said for where I am in my own life. I might be in the middle of a journey, but I ain’t lost. And yes, I can do anything I want!