That way lies madness, dear.
Keep your eyes on the path you chose.
What might have been?
What could have been?
All dangerous conjecture.
Embrace today.
Celebrate this self, right here.
Right now.
Embrace what is.
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.NaPoWriMo Day 2 The official prompt from napowrimo.net today: Explore your own “Road not Taken”
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Ignore any ads below. Unless for Fluevog shoes, I do not endorse them.
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creating ourselves means choosing
if I want to be a person whose home is full of original art
I must begin by buying supporting artists
if I want to be a person who is confident enough to wear red lipstick
I must put the lipstick on my lips.
If I want to be a person who dances in the rain
I must head outside during the storm.
Whatever I desire
I must dare.
Year after year
smiling faces under glass.
So many smiles only a whisper of memory:
oh yes. I remember that one
and that one
and that.
But so many others
slipped out of mind,
phantoms who haunted our rooms.
Are they still hovering ghosts
watching life happening around them
or are they finally
corporeal?
Snow is falling by the window:
down,
slanted,
sideways,
sparsely,
heavily,
quickly,
slowly.
Everything is possible;
you don’t need to know.
Just rest at the window,
watch the snow.
This is not a test.
One chance.
One.
It all counts.
This is it.
Go.
Will I choose you?
Or you?
Or will I choose at all?
Am I ready for this work
of nurturing potential?
My world is wound tightly
with possibility,
fighting emotionality with
rationality.
“I know this guy
who chopped off all his fingers in a blender.”
What? Was he intoxicated? drunk? high?
“Nope.”
You’re kidding. Why would he do that?
“Well, you know, he wanted to prove he could touch
the middle of the chopping part without getting hurt.”
But he couldn’t, apparently.
Shrug. “I guess not.”
Huh.
“Yeah. People from Calgary are stupid.”
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Sometimes, I am very afraid for the youth of today.
In the book, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, Skeeter is confronted by her maid, Constantine who tells her,
“Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision…. You gone have to ask yourself, Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?” (Kathryn Stockett, p. 73)
Skeeter is floored by this revelation. She says,
“All my life I’d been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a a girl. But with Constantine’s thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.” (Ibid. p. 74)
This is a powerful message, isn’t it? You choose the values, morals and beliefs that guide your life. Your parents may teach you theirs, but in the end, you have the right, perhaps really the obligation, to choose your own.
She had stood in one of those rare border crossings between the past and the future where one is aware—so aware—that the decision about to be made will change everything. (Charles de Lint’s Memory and Dream, p. 69)
I’m just thinking about milestones. You know, the mid-life crisis kind of moments when you look at your life and you think the crucial questions:
If the answer to any of those questions in no, then it’s the time to stand on the corner and study the other directions that you could go. If you don’t like where you’re headed, if you don’t like what you’re doing. if you don’t like what you’re feeling, then it’s time to take charge of your life and head in a new direction.
Sometimes your heart in your throat and the weight on your shoulder try to force you to stay on the familiar, painful path. If you’re not happy there, why keep walking it? If you’re not the person you want to be, you are the only one who has the power to transform into the true self lurking beneath the surface.
Take hold of your future. Put your feet on a new path and embrace the adventure of discovery. Despite all the fears that have held you back from attaining the true connection and the true joy you hve longed for, you may discover a world of fulfillment unbelievably better than what you had before. Even though you couldn’t imagine more, your new path may lead you to a bounty of joy that you couldn’t conceive of previously.
Look around the cross roads, step over the border into a new life.
Shawn L. Bird 
plop-ripple-ripple-ripple August 2, 2011
Tags: consequences, decisions, postaday2011
Today I’m thinking about the small “what if” moments that change our world. A small decision can alter the universe, because it has a ripple effect.
For example, about 2 years ago I was reading a blog written by my nephew in Alberta. I had the rambling thought, ‘he reminds me of Violet.’ Violet was one of my students a couple years before. Over the next few weeks I was reading Violet’s writings, and his writings, and the thought just kept getting stronger. Those who follow the ‘mind your own business’ school of thought, would have just left it there.
Eventually, I gave up fighting it. I made a small decision.
I asked each of them if they’d like an introduction. At the least, they’d enjoy each other’s literary and philosophical observations. They agreed. One September day they were introduced via Facebook. He lived about 700 km away from her, but they wrote frequently. They did enjoy each other’s literary and philosophical ramblings. A lot.
In October he came to meet her. He had a dozen red roses in hand.
In November she went to meet his friends and family.
In December he came to meet her family and experience a completely different Christmas than he was used to.
and so the ripples spread…
In the spring came an engagement, and last October there came a wedding.
Today, I am meeting a very tiny person. A sweet, baby girl is a lovely ripple in our world.
Kind of awe inspiring, isn’t it?
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