Last night I emailed a friend and colleague to work out some logistics and in her response this morning she mentioned she is ‘waiting’ to see if anyone signs up for her event late in the afternoon. And I can’t begin to tell you the flurry of activity it set off in my body. I did breathe AND it was not enough since I had to prepare myself for a meeting with a client. So as I sit here now, having the time to really let the sensations move through me I am curious. What is it about the words or the idea of having to wait for someone else to make a decision to see if I can do something mean to me? Memories of being told to ‘wait’ to go to the bathroom if we were on a trip, to ‘wait’ my turn, to ‘wait’ until someone catches up all meaning for me to put my life on hold for someone else.
I am DONE with that. No more waiting. A ringing in my ears, no longer willing to wait to show up for my life. It’s all about me right? So what about my deadline, my cut off point, my line in the sand where I declare you have until this time to respond and then I am moving on?
Power struggle comes to mind… when I am willing to put mySelf in wait mode do I give the other person perceived power over me? So that now I am scrambling at the last moment to pull it all together? What takes so long to make a decision? I know in my body instantly if I want to do something or not, go somewhere or not, be with someone or not, the wait game is the time I give myself to convince myself whether I should or should not do something. Am I still willing to play that game? Another deeply held belief, truth that I was taught sooooo long ago.
What are we teaching our children when we say… you have to wait until your older for that, wait until your bigger or stronger? Are we even willing to let them try? How often do we marvel when those young beings do things that we consider well beyond their grasp, or so we presume adhering to the beliefs, values and attitudes that we learned as children.
I have to wait until I am credentialed, I say that, or I used to say that to mySelf a lot. I have to learn more, I have to have so many years of experience, who came up with that? There is a lot of fire energy moving through me right now and I am not ‘waiting’ for it to pass I am claiming it now! I am claiming my right to set a deadline and only change my mind if it suits me, because it’s the right thing for me.
Another layer discovered, another part of mySelf revealed, knowing I am now a different person. Thank you Sheila for your part in this new discovery of mySelf.
Thank you for reading and/or listening…and now you are feeling…connected to the content? Agitated? A range of emotions you can’t quite put your finger on?
Lisa,
Thanks for this.
I think that your statement, ‘I am claiming my right to set a deadline and only change my mind if it suits me, because it’s the right thing for me’ is critical to the conversation here. Certainly, it is an attitude that I AM choosing to embrace for mySelf, with the caveat that I AM choosing as (not, necessarily, if) it suits me. The other side to that, for me, is the notion of feeling ‘pushed’ to make a decision, when all I have ever wanted was/is to decide, for mySelf, in my own sweet time, not relative to what others want for themselves. I Am done with running to catch up [move away from]… I am choosing to slow down [move toward]. And in all of that, I am choosing to cess out all the dichotomies, known and unknown to me that run counter to what I want and to what I congruently have to say about that. Like a dog with a most powerful sniffer, I Am getting so that I can smell out these dichotomies. It means that my own sense of smell is becoming more and more canine in my choosing to ‘move toward’, in the face of it operating, undercover, as ‘move away’. The truth of any matter is that away/toward, ultimately and simply IS. My choice, nothing less, nothing more. Present tense.
That push to make a decision against my own timing becomes the pull to not wait on mySelf, as it suits me. When I decide against mySelf, I AM deciding for others in ways that cannot possibly support them, even as I claim that support of them is what I want to enact. Can’t happen. My unclaimed incongruency is the abortion of any chance of creating the life that I want for mySelf – and it impacts others – big time. I know this miscarriage of my own Self justice/injustice well.
And then, the even larger conversation, for me, is the one about space [an evolution that I am becoming so intimate with in my own life] as in when do I surrender what is meaningful to me in conflict with what I hold as practical and fair play for others. When does claiming Space as my own and for its own sake collapse itself in what I imagine as the flames of another’s desire? When do I feel perceived injustice around that – as in I can’t have what I have arranged, paid, worked – etc. etc. etc. – for?[That has been a infecting virus in my own life for as long as I can remember.] When does my response feel like a ‘what next’ surrender to ‘I can’t’? When does my response feel like retaliation as in ‘not over my dead body’? What is the genius in push/pull. not enough/enough [space, time – etc. – to arrange, decide, plan – etc.], no space/space?
The sheer illusion of it all, that, in my genius, I make manifest in my life as real! Such a grand paradox! If my illusion is the matrix for what I create, then I might want to imagine something that actually will support me – not in denial of the sensory cues that I feel in my body – but resourced by that movement! I AM my own push/pull, my own not enough/enough, my own no Space/Space… and my own not more/more. I AM my own Golden Mean. I Am my own not organizing principle/organzing principle for my life. It all works and it all IS.
It is my choice, in the end, that inspires my result… and it is MY result… it IS mine. In the beginning [every exhale], the middle [every inhale] and the end [every exhale], it all just IS. I just AM; I AM just. My truth is that… so ARE WE all.
2 sides of the same coin.
Mahalo.
Sheila.