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Do defining moments equip an individual with an enhanced internal navigation system? I ask because I believe the further along the path you travel, the less road signs there are. The less clarity there seems to be. Assurance gives way to misleading factors driving your every choice. Something has to take over if you're going to keep travelling the right path.
You can't avoid the challenge of learning how to navigate from the inside rather than depending on the outside. Well, aside from taking round-a-bouts or traffic circles where, yes, lights and signs remain in plenty because you're moving in the same circle over and over - never travelling deeper, rather set in course on cruise control. These signs keep you in place, never changing, never growing. Comforting little circles - slow enough you don't get dizzy, you don't notice. You don't have to think, but ease... ease doesn't mean it's the right road you should be on. Buck up and take the next right.....
Defining moments... that which enhances an individual? Scrapes away the scales from tired eyes? Defining moments full of realization perhaps just as much about what doesn't define you as what does. They are what kicks you into a passionate stand - "never will I ____________" or "from here on I will ______________." Internal navigation. Parameters set.
What about the defining moments which by their own nature are ever so slight? An absolutely brittle tremor missed by most. Unrecognized, unappreciated for the change in course it contributed to (even though it may take years to transpire). Doesn't matter, the slightest change in direction is a change in direction and plays part in altering your final destination.
On any given day I do not believe our destination remains the same. You can change it a dozen times over within a single day. With, or without knowing it.
You may miss a turn or two or twenty... no one is counting. Regardless of where the missed turn seems to be taking you in the moment, be open to the journey - this is where possibility is waiting to be shot out of a canon, breaking ground on a path you may never have considered before.
Eyes of the heart and soul - keep them wide open. Brace for it... synchronicity, favor and manifestation. Let it be in your world. Move the question mark aside, clear the doorway, the windows, the walkways... make room for flow.
In a single swoop both fists buried themselves against her collar bone, swallowing handful after handful of her shirt. Slammed against a plain white wall she is lifted, just barely off the floor. Whole body vibrating, her mother's lungs were pushing everything they could past her vocal cords creating one of the most familiar sounds the girl would ever come to know - her mother's screams. Eyes closed tight, the girl was trying to understand, wishing she could remember what she did to make her mother so angry. The vice grip released and she was thrust to the side, banished to a room at the back of the duplex. The room had a small balcony hanging off it like a dirty blanket.
The girls own chest was curling up into a ball inside of her. Fiery tears immediately slashing a wet path down her face. Her heart pounding incredibly as she stared out the window and down the street. Her body caught on to the idea before her mind did. She was going to run. She could make it. She could run.
To her left, a second bedroom also opened to the balcony. Beady little eyes peered out above the bottom of the window watching her. She knew her little sister would tell on her. Still, she found herself pleading anyway, and still, like any little runt of a sibling would do - her little sister lied and promised not to tell.
With a deep breath the girl jumped from the one and a half story balcony and ran. Oh my god she ran. Overwhelmed with fear and knowing that her little sister was at that very moment telling on her, adrenaline only heightened the terrified sensation already blanketing her from the inside out. It was as though a vicious dog had caught glimpse of her and was taking chase. There was no one on her heels, but it didn't feel like that at all. Everything in her was running... body and mind. She arrived at a dirty worn down strip mall several blocks away and found the first pay phone she could. Clutching the receiver she dialed her Aunt.
Safely at her Aunt's house, the girl sat in the corner of a wide open front room buried down in an oversized lazyboy chair. As though a terrible gust of wind - her mother shot through the front door and the girl's heart shot into her throat lodging itself there as a lump. Without pause her mother shouted out her full name followed by "get your ass in the car now." The girl's Uncle appeared from the kitchen and stood at the top of the stairs like a warrior. "No," he said. Frozen with dread, the girl watched the back and forth. "Calm down" he demanded. "She's my daughter," the mother blasted, "don't tell me how to mother my child!" "You're upset, you need time to calm down," her Uncle continued.
Through the bars of the railing which separated the upstairs from the entrance of the house where her mother was, the girl caught her mother's eye. Like a tiger in a cage, her mother paced with a deadly gaze. Enraged, but trapped. Furious, but behind bars. The girl wanted so badly to smile, she could feel it surfacing. But just as quickly she felt it sink right back down. Her mother's locked on gaze pierced through the whole escapade of running away and reality hit. She couldn't hide behind her Aunt & Uncle forever and when she did come home... there would be hell to pay.
You'll notice the world doesn't bring you the beauty it possesses. You live and come across it every day. Life long discovery and connection to your own path and it's unique direction... or misdirection. Your re-routing is beautiful too. A heart reignited is just as precious as a heart already on fire.
Charged... with purpose, power, a pulse. Letting the difference sink in... between knowing about greatness, and being great. Between studying the story, and taking the steps. The courage to be and fail... fall... rise and run. The greatest little damn moment you've ever seen. All of this is greatness. Recognizing your own story. Noticing the the look in your own eye that stands like a rock. Seeing your own smile light a path through the shadows to the middle of your own soul. Remembering your own heart and how vast it truly is.
True - many of us are our own greatest enemy. The line is long thereafter. Life calls us to stand straight, to breathe with intent and be something. But greatness... greatness calls on us to put the two together - the purpose and the individuality. To seek balance and beauty in the woman or man you are... and USE IT ALL to light the hell out of the path you're on.
Be not on someone else's path - and if you already are... well, you may notice you're not exactly equipped to be on that path, that it's not working. And it's not about you not hackin' it either because there's no comparison when it comes to life path and purpose from one person to the next. Path must be appreciated in the eyes of the life source walking it out. And purpose appreciated in light of the thousands of nuances which make that individual unique and perfect for the purpose they embody.
Each breath you take is yours, the heart thumping inside your chest is yours, and the mind racing the plains of thought, creation, emotion and dreams... is also yours to take the reigns and soar. But if you've struggled to get the bird in the air... I still say check who's path you're on. Because I know for a fact - we've each been blessed with our own endless sky... wide open and waiting for us to take aim.
Waves, though beautiful, will crush you - never weeping. Never slowing. Ever crashing. Power is what they are and do. What are you going to be and do? And when? Old and grey? Otherwise engaged? Never the time to make time so that time could have the chance to take you somewhere still and wide and open.
Finding greatness within leads to finding freedom within. With every mind, soul and heart that turns and pushes against the crowd I'm moved. Pounding against the surface of purpose like a drum... finding their song. I am so incredibly moved.
A vision lost, a dream fallen, or even music fading throughout the hallways of your once dancing heart... may not be what it seems. And to prove it, the universe will at times... take aim and find you.
I was watching a Dan Rather report on TV when the universe took aim at me. The story of “Miriam” began to unfold. Born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan, at 23 Miriam was swelling inside with an insatiable passion for writing and poetry. They show her cowering a bit behind a tree talking on a cell phone her family doesn't know she has. They explain she’s standing just outside of a very small English school run by an American man. An unassuming place of refuge, she‘s there in secret. This is the only place she has to hold her pen to paper, to free her words, to be the writer no one else knows she is.
Miriam’s father was not like most fathers in Kabul. Boys come first when it comes to education and 88% of women in Afghanistan are illiterate, yet he affectionately called Miriam “my scholar daughter.” And although teenage girls are more likely to become wives than students, he was her safety and her encouragement to pursue University. Goosebumps stand in honor. A woman’s life in Afghanistan will last (on average) 44 years. He was changing her stars.
Miriam’s father passed away and her two younger brothers took over the family, leading them all under the ceilings of tradition, of Taliban. They do not know, and can never know Miriam writes. She explains that her brothers have only allowed her to finish her schooling as long as she works part time because they are both unemployed. When asked what her brothers think she does for work, she replies “just a simple language teacher.” Little do they know she is already an anonymously published writer.
I suddenly feel so utterly exposed. I can’t stop thinking about my blog, how it has sat untouched for over a year now. It’s just her and I in my mind.
I watched in shock as I witnessed her brothers accept an offer of $20,000 from Miriam’s Uncle. It was done - her first cousin would very soon be her husband. An illiterate farmer living in a Taliban-controlled area far away from Kabul. She would be taken from her refuge, from her cell phone, from her University... from all possibility and opportunity she had been risking her life to work toward in utter secrecy. Forced to go the journey from the edge of her dreams to the edge of an unfathomable darkness.
In my mind she keeps looking at me. Silent, her gaze feels heavy like guilt. As a writer, I have been sitting on my hands out of fear… out of a paralyzing worry that I have nothing worthy to say. My eyes are burning. How do I explain this foolishness to her? A woman who has fought for every word she's captured on page. Accepting a life of secrecy and embracing risk just for the chance to write one more poem… bring to life just one more story.
Miriam may not realize, but through her own endeavors to write, to follow her passion despite the incredible risk... she has, the entire time, been writing one of her most powerful stories yet... her own. Humbled, I'm reminded of something I wrote a very long time ago…
“There is a huge difference between being inspired for just a moment,
and being challenged to aspire yourself from that moment on.” (c.w.)