The Answer?

Yesterday I ended with a question: What's the answer?

I think I may, perhaps, have hit upon - at least in part - the answer to my own question. At the very least, it provides food for thought.

A while back a friend loaned me a book called Wild Succulent Women by an author named SARK. I'd never heard of this author. But I loved the book and while in the US in October I picked up three more of SARK's books. I think every woman should read them. The one I'm currently reading is called The Bodacious Book of Succulence. This part of the book really leapt out at me this morning. It's from the chapter entitled Making More Alive Choices.

"When considering choices in your life, the "most alive choice" feels like a bit of a risk, makes you giggle, or makes the hairs at the back of your neck stand up. It can be a simple and tiny shift, such as taking a new route or as large as moving your whole life somewhere you haven't lived before.

We are constantly presented with choices. Often, our inner critics run the whole show, and we use a lot of language with these words:

Have to
Should
I'd better
Or else

These can be bullies of the language world.

Sometimes we need to wonder who is making our life choices! We might stumble from one obligation to another, lost in a series of have-tos. People buy wedding gifts they don't want to buy, attend birthday parties out of guilt or fear, spend time with people they don't even enjoy, or push their children into unwanted activities. And then we all get crabby!

I think that as adults we become rigified, encrusted with grudges, wounds, and protective devices that don't work anyway. We walk carefully along, checking our purses, pockets and car keys. Gone are our bamboo walking sticks and flags for countries that we've made up. I think those things are gone because we've stopped calling them.

We deserve to be the caretakers for our spirits and dreams, and this means truly sensing and listening for our most alive route. It may not be a common path, or a popular one, yet it will be clearly ours."

OK. At this point I'm absolutely FLYING with what she's saying here. Now the question remains - how do I put this into practice in MY life? Easier said than done.

She goes on....(excerpted from her chapter entitled Leaps of Faith).......

"Our lives are filled with places where we choose to leap or stay put. One is not better than the other, yet leaping has its advantages. Leaps of faith are also taken by staying. If you are raising children consciously, or schooling them differently, you are demonstrating daily leaps of faith. Commitments of all kinds require leaps of faith."

OK. So now my question is: How can one make those Alive Choices if one's partner isn't supportive of them? If there's an Alive Choice you need to make and you and your partner aren't on the same "page" where the choice is concerned?

Just thinking out loud here.....