The Corral

Lots of things are chang­ing in my world…my busi­ness is not what I thought it was and it may be even less of that soon, a baby is float­ing in a very small ocean right next to me and soon that ocean will float that baby into my life – like Moses in the bull­rushes. So I have the oppor­tu­nity to ask a ques­tion: what do I want my life to look like now? Inside me there are the voices of “no” that sim­ply stand like trees all around me. They have always been there. I don‘t know how else to describe them. I would like to say they are silent but they are not. They have the one word. I think I feel them as real and all around me but they are not. They are made up, in my head, not what I thought they were. I can, like this lit­tle sea­horse, sim­ply swim through the gate of his coral cor­ral, and away.

I have lived so long with the Trees of No that I actu­ally behave as if they are real and that they can keep me here/doing this or that/unhappy/resentful/stuck. They can­not. It helps me to have other voices talk to me about Yes. Rose does this. Anita, Will, Phil, Bar­bara, Claire, Kim, Sean, Mary, Brian, Pam, Pre­ston, Kelly, Tim, Blake, Chelsea, and many more. Hmmm. There are lots of yes peo­ple in my world. They are my friends. With all these other voices, I still find myself hang­ing out in the same famil­iar, dark and dank reaches in my head.

It‘s not one of the other, I know. It‘s not all yes or all no. I also know that I have not led a life of paral­y­sis. I have had great adven­tures in all kinds of ways. My last post on this blog called for me to look for the cir­cle of peo­ple who make up my vil­lage, who are already there. It is time to look at them and not for them, to know and believe and act as if I am not alone. The voices in my head – those old voices – are just not right and although they are me, they are not all of me, truly me, and they are not my best me. The other voices (my voice, really) tell a dif­fer­ent story, and they are waiting.