Goethe's Challenge

Commiting to a series of outcomes. Mapping out in detail. Executing to achieve specified results. Getting more and more concrete. More and more measurable. Following through with determination and dedication.
What will it take? What will be involved in doing what it takes? What are my competing commitments?
As Goethe challenges: commit and see how the universe responds.

The Stuff of Dreams

Living the dream is not the stuff of dreams. Grounded, unrelenting effort applied at every turn. Deliberate even in rest and pause. Wanting something bad enough so that all outer obstacles and inner demons are worth confronting.
We weep only should the dream remain a dream. Fleshed out in the complexities of lived life, such visions no doubt lose some luster. We slog as much as we float. But drudgery, fear and difficulties are nothing compared to the slow death promised to those who dream without living.

Creating the Day

While the rain scrubs the sky outside, classical music fills the air where I cradle my coffee and create the new day into which I will step. My lungs swell and I find myself owning the room, filling the awkward gaps hewn by fear.
Gift received, gift offered. Glistening eye contact celebrating an unexpected friend, and the universe responds to my resolve and poise. What sort of day shall we create?

Spreading Smile

Sketching backdrops of hope with a borrowed pencil. New worlds emerge in the negative space, where searching hearts seldom linger. Gratitude's selective memory compels out of rumored credibility alone. Poise assumed with no assurance of vindication. My spreading smile puzzles even me.

Roots in Powerlessness

Anger, cynicism and self-doubt are a cancer cocktail. Each has its own power to sabotage with subtlety and thoroughness. Together they swell to apocalyptic magnitude and collaborate with demonic cunning.
They share roots in powerlessness.
Powerlessness didn't seem to deter Jesus, if it even bothered him.
I am so different.

Costly Misreading

Opposition on multiple fronts. Confusion misread as antagonism.
No companions for the journey. Leadership misread as isolation.
The burden of proof remains on me. Challenge misread as burden.
New bruises and scars daily. Learning misread as failure.
Refusing to give up. Stewardship misread as denial.
Mustering the will to choose again. Growth opportunity misread as discouragement.
Death. Vindication misread as judgment.

High Privilege

Chilling winds gust across barren soulscapes, howling agonies no pending dawn can console. Furtive glances betray the resolve lost in a distant season on an unrecognized shore before I realized it was so dark.
There was a day when a smile broke more effortlessly. Less will and sheer determination required. Arms fully extended, but each neighbor loiters just out of reach.
Grieve not for me. I certainly do not. For I will find nourishment even in the morning dew and consider it a privilege to reach even if never to touch.

The Next Twenty Years

Twenty years together now!
There's no way to foresee what life together will look like twenty years in the future when deciding to walk in loving partnership with someone. I lived with my parents for a mere seventeen. This family, our family, is my story now. Not the marriage chapter of a longer story, but the dominant theme, the underlying framework, the core of the plot, to which our families of origin were merely a brief preparatory prequel.
Instead of measuring time in developmental milestones: honeymoon, early jobs, child-bearing years, 7-year hump, etc., I'm now thinking about the next twenty years. What else will we build on this solid, stable framework of relationship? The possibilities are endless. Though we each change and develop, and often in different directions, those changes merely add color and texture to an ever-expanding mosaic. (Hopefully enriching more than fading the overall creative piece.)
I would never have imagined much of what the last twenty years has held for us. My heart wonders now what the next twenty will hold.

Self Talk

Sometimes we have to be our own cheerleader. Especially when we pursue something others are not yet seeing or understanding. We have to remind ourselves of the whys and wherefores of our conviction that we do in fact see something. We have to develop the capacity to discern between the many voices that accuse so "lovingly" of our craziness or naivete.
Courage flags for many reasons. Not everyone has an Arwyn in their life whispering bold assertions of destinies fulfilled. We learn to whisper to ourselves. Tentatively at first. Almost embarrassed at the audacity and self-centeredness of the exercise. It is not long, though, that we learn our survival depends upon it.

Most Important, Most Elusive

Ironically, the most important thing to me is the one thing that is outside of my control—that my existence matter to others. And for all people's good intentions and sincere remonstrances, the fact is that our lives are too busy to offer much more than kind assertions. We are glad to root for each other as long as we don't have to walk with each other. Walking with someone might involve going a considerable distance out of our way. I would like the experience of someone going out of their way in order to walk with me.

Deciding What's Important

Deciding what is important to me. While we've already established I don't have access to know what I want, important to me might be doable.
Having said that, I do realize that what I say is important to me is often contradicted by what I do. A good look at my schedule is a sobering reality check.
The gap between intent and outcome acknowledged, I suspect there is fruit to be born in articulating and rearticulating, sorting and resorting, committing and recommitting to all that is most important to me. As the pressures of this crazy world taunt and tempt and squeeze and compete, I have in effect established my own criteria for making decisions. Having decided what is most important provides a reflective framework for making decisions about much that remains. Now, what is important to me?

Preaching to Myself

Pushing for renewed focus. Grasping for the wherewithall to execute. The bias toward action that I preach to others, I want for myself.
Too comfortable in the world of ideas. The problem not being the world of ideas and my utter delight there, but in the "too comfortable."

Worth Dying For

With threatening sullenness, the murky lake ignores my pacing. The slime lapping across my bare feet. Long have I known there is no way around this lake. Its infinite shoreline deceivingly invites me to forfeit the rest of my days in the attempt. Braving the unknowns of the depths before me is more than I can fathom at the moment, though certainly my ultimate route. Monsters reign beneath the surface.
The fairy tales promise a happy ending. Life, though, is no fairy tale. However determined to face down any horror that would deny me passage, there is no guarantee I will slay my Grendels. Guarantee of victory is no victory at all. It is precisely because the risks are real that the battles must be undertaken, and I must proceed to enter the water.
Life is worth dying for.

Something Has Got to Change

Something has got to change. I have to change something.
When current methods, strategies and practices aren't serving us well, how much damage—or lack of progess—are we willing to sustain before coming to terms with the fact that we have to do something differently? No need to minimize the existence or impact of the many factors outside of our control. But ultimately we all must, and specifically now I must, look deep and hard at what I need to change.
To plug along in the name of commitment, perseverance or determination in the face of consistently contradictory facts is neither commitment, perseverance nor determination.
The challenge becomes how to give up on failing methods, strategies and practices without giving up on the dream one is working toward. We must garner the courage to face what isn't working, and instead of interpreting it as failure or weakness, seizing it as a powerful learning opportunity. The need to change, even if it comes in the form of emergency sirens or howling pain, is a gift to be embraced not a indictment to be avoided.