walking the sacred spiral
walking the sacred spiral
I like the idea of thriving. The word, to me, implies living happily and well.
But it also makes me wonder whose idea of thriving I’m using. If I were 25 thriving would include a lot of high-energy physical activities: dancing, swimming, singing, and sex. It would also include health, wealth and happiness, of course.
If I were 35 with young children, thriving might include happy family times. Maybe camping and cookouts, ghost stories around the campfire, and doing science projects together.
If I were 45 my idea of thriving could include rising on my career path successfully, with plenty of income and accolades, as well as good friends and a happy family.
If I were 85 I might think in terms of energy, health, good family relationships, plenty of money, and enjoyment of the people around me. I might want to slow down and savor good conversations, good music and good meals in a different way than I ate them up at 25. Or I might want to travel and adventure in places I’d never visited.
What is a thriving life to you today? Is it one thing that has stayed the same, or does it change as your life changes? Does thriving have to be all-inclusive at every age, or can we feel we’re thriving when we are still striving for something?
I suspect that a happy, thriving life isn’t one where a person arrives and never budges again. What would be the fun in that? There must be something worthwhile to reach for or to learn. There needs to be a risk involved so that we have to stretch ourselves in new ways to meet the challenge.
I miss the point sometimes. I get to thinking that I should have mastered this or that by now. When that happens it’s easy to get off track and stop engaging with what life is offering.
What if we were to turn things around, and instead of defining thriving as something elusive, we decided that we are really thriving right now, even as we are still striving in one way or another.
If yours already is a thriving life, what are the elements you can point to that prove it is so? What if you have never been anything other than thriving?
If we had to define every experience as a blessing, how deeply would we look at our interpretations of some of them as problems or frustrations?
Since I believe that the Infinite Mystery really is infinite, it follows that the Infinite is one indivisible being-ness. It must be me, too, since I exist. Its infinite is my infinite; its wholeness is mine, too.
If I can’t be other than what It is (in reality, I mean, not just in my labeling and perceptions of experiences, place and people), how could I not thrive? How could I be, in the essence of being, anything other than whole? I couldn’t possibly be. That throws a wrench into my judgments of appearances, for sure.
What if under the appearances, it’s all just fine? All is whole. All is thriving. Right now. We have to look deeper for that view.
Deep breath. Look again.
Thriving is here, now, no matter what the age or condition appears to be. Thriving already is. Let’s embrace it.
What Does ‘Thriving’ Look Like?
Wednesday, September 10, 2014