Just Like Riding A Bike...

Sometimes life can be like riding a bicycle. It can be an exhilarating, liberating, joy inducing, awe inspiring, fun-filled, satisfying experience. Soaring along, enjoying the beautiful scenery, wind whipping through your hair.
But sometimes there are unforeseen circumstances that throw you off balance. Sometimes, the chain comes off mid-pedal and you are spinning your legs madly and getting nowh...ere fast! Or you hit a steep hill and you have work harder than ever before to make it to the top.
Sometimes, you hit an unexpected rock or bump or patch of sand or gravel, and you slip and you slide and wobble... Sometimes, you recover just in the nick of time. With your heart racing wildly in panicked relief. And sometimes you don't. Sometimes despite your very best effort to correct, you lose control and go flying, ass over tea kettle onto the pavement. Banging your elbows and knees. Tasting dirt and blood from face planting into the unforgiving ground.
You struggle to regain your knocked out breath. Sitting in the ditch on the side of the road, watching the ridiculous spinning of your overturned bicycle, you wipe your tears, and assess the extent of the damage.
Are you okay? Can you walk? Is your bike incapacitated? Can you ride? Do you even want to try???
We can and we do. Our perseverance is epic. And we go on to have days filled with carefree joy, freedom and fulfillment. Falling down, getting hurt and continuing on is part of the process . We fall. We get up. And so it goes. Life is a precarious ride. But the fact of the matter is, you'll never get where you're going if you don't get back on the bike, or learn to ride in the first place. Don't let fear or discouragement prevent you from feeling the pure bliss of immersing yourself fully into the unlimited, infinitely rewarding possibilities afforded you simply by being alive!

-Love

The Children's Museum

Today I was lucky enough to join my exhuberant preschooler on a class trip to The Children’s Museum. We boarded the long coveted yellow school bus and buckled 14 little people into their seats. (Yes, they have harness buckles for preschoolers, gone are the days of bouncing around freely while the driver watches helpless in his overhead mirror.)

We the parents and teachers settled in for a long ride of singing, screaming, giggling, whining, crying, laughing, fussing, fighting, and joking. One or two mini meltdowns later, curtailed by talented adults who know just how to distract, engage, and divert a restrained 4-5 year old, we finally arrived at the museum.

Here we joined with moms and dads and play-groups galore in a rambunctious romp fest of infinite proportions. As the children climbed, and ran, splashed, built, crashed, banged, and pretended their way through the museum, I found myself inundated with the immense poignancy of people spilling love all over these perfect, precious children.  

I watched gratefully as daddy’s “gobbled” their chubby little toddler’s legs, and mommy’s caressed sweet little heads. I saw siblings and classmates looking out for one another. I saw children interacting with children they had never met before with a shared sense of purpose, to cultivate the most joy they possibly could from this experience. I saw parents and caregivers smiling at one another with compassion and understanding. An unspoken message seemed to be passing invisibly through the air from one to another, “We are loving, we are trying”. Perhaps the morning had been wrought with tantrums and yelling, or maybe the ride there had been a tear-filled nightmare… Maybe someone’s toddler had been teething the night before or a family member had been sick recently… Regardless of what baggage we all carried into that museum, what I saw was a beautiful display of pure grace.

In the eyes of the children, the parents, the caregivers, I saw a moment that captured the simple, ecstatic innocence of childhood. My heart was overcome with gratitude, burdened with sorrow at the thought of anyone suffering, helpless over the fact that we live in a world where innocence and joy are shadowed by violence and fear.

I found myself moved to tears as I sat and appreciated, soaking up every single second of the bliss that played out before me. I was so glad to have been there, to have shared this day with a building full of joy seekers and life livers. I was honored to be a mother, a woman, a human being, a part of something so inexplicably awesome.

 

-Love

 

Broken Hearts and Tears...

We appear to be lost in a mass hallucination where suffering, perceived differences, hatred, competition, separation, and fear, masquerade as reality. It is only a matter of time before humanity is forced to reevaluate its perception and begins to truly live a life based on truth and love.

 We will evolve. It will take what it takes to wake up the disillusioned masses. Only then will it change. This is yet another tragic opportunity to commune with each other and love one another through our grief. We are so lost from our purpose of love and compassion. We are working from a place completely detached from the essence of our beings. At the heart of it all, we ARE one. One living organism, connected inexorably through the very life force that creates us. Call it what you will, but there is a connective force and until we recognize that and utilize it for our progression, we will suffer the pain and injury created by self-denial, self-loathing, and self- destruction.

 We cannot on the one hand “fight” to save lives, go to extremes to survive disease and disaster, and then on the other hand be (unwittingly or inadvertently) responsible for the great irreverence for life which is the current paradigm pervading our planet. Until we see ourselves as connected to not only our familiars, but to ALL, our best effort toward advancement and evolution remains thwarted. Like bailing water out of the ocean with a thimble, we exhaust ourselves with effort and never acknowledge on a grand scale, that the problem is a lack of commitment to ourselves. We as a species deserve our best chance to progress, and if this is our best, we have a long way to go.

I have faith that we will arrive one day, though the path shall be paved with broken hearts and tears.

 -Love