Away is right where I'm at

I had a call yesterday from a friend who reads my blog every morning.

"I just had to call and tell you what happened today," she began and proceeded to tell me about standing up for herself at work. Of asking for what she wanted by asking herself the tough questions and standing up for what she deserved.

Way to go K. Well done!

Yesterday I had lunch with my eldest daughter. She returned last Thursday night from Thailand after being away for almost 4 months.

"I don't fit in," she said. "I go away and come home and can't find myself here."

The joy and trials of travelling and coming home to where you're at.

For me, it is the joy and tribulation of time by the sea. By the sea, my soul is soothed, my spirit revived.

Landlocked, surrounded by the concrete confines of this city nestled at the foot of the Rockies, it is more difficult to be in touch with that sense of being greater than the narrow confines of the world around me. Of being part of 'the ineffable', the elusive spirit of creativity that crashes into me with every waking moment, that fills the void with wanderlust and wondrous visions of life as an adventure worth exploring.

Not that it doesn't exist where ever I am. It does.

But here, where life orders up meetings and places to be and things to do like a full meal deal on steroids, being creative takes work. Being 'in touch' with spirit, with soul and creativity takes discipline, commitment, strength and courage. It takes getting out of touch with my agenda, and into the flow of my desire to be all I'm meant to be in the moment of my doing from the centre of my being.

Like my walk in the rain last night. The rain began to fall before we even got to the end of our walk. My youngest daughter and I shrugged and decided to keep going. The 'spit' turned into a downpour. Storm clouds rolled and churned, spilling out their deluge. Drenched, running across sodden grass, we dodged hailstones pelting down, leaped across puddles and gutters filling up. We kept going. By the time we got home, we were soaked, through to the skin, but it didn't matter. The puppies were happy and we were alive! What a way to live.

I have always noticed that when I am 'away', I find myself centered within my being, sparkling with creativity and tuned into the flow. Without timetables, without an agenda keeping my world in order, life is grace and ease, an exciting exploration of the world around me. Life is a wide open flow of ideas pouring down upon me.

Here, at home where expectations stare me in the face every morning and my agenda is the bible making sense of my day, I can block the flow by standing safe and dry beneath my umbrella of 'things to do', duties to take care of. Under my umbrella, angels tears are nothing more than rain falling. Elephants dancing across the sky are nothing more than clouds rolling by. Under my umbrella my sights are set on the world at my feet, my vision limited by where I'm at -- and often where I'm at is running a race without a racetrack, even though I'm going round and round in circles!

Perhaps it is because when I'm 'away', I don't have commitments to get things done, I have a commitment to finding the value in the doing of whatever I'm doing. 'Away', I am inspired by the world around me. The world around me appears fresh, alive, intriguing. The mystical awaits around every corner. The magical pops out of every nook and cranny, every tree-lined street and wrinkle-lined face.

And that is the challenge. To find the mystical in my daily grind. To turn the grind into a magical journey where I don't fit in because fitting in is for woosies. Fitting in grinds me down.

Life is not a pair of shoes to be worn down on the road of getting from point A to point B.

Life is a fairy's dance in silver slippers, silk ribbons flying. Life is a liberated journey out of shoes that fit into trying on new pairs. Of donning glass slippers with six inch stiletto's and breaking the mould so that I can dance with barefoot abandon, casting off the confines of my expectations that I need to be anyone other than who I truly am.

Life is not in the fit, it's in the misfits who travel beyond the tried and true.

Finding my place here in the city is a recipe for settling for the mundane, the banal, the prosaic.

It takes work to not fit in. It takes effort to let go of the trivial, the hackneyed turn of phrase, the comfort zone meanderings that lead me nowhere but where I've always been.

It takes work and commitment and a belief that life is found out there crashing fearlessly into where I'm at. Life fits me well when I'm living on the outside of my comfort zone, no matter where in the world I may be.

Magical, mystical life. This journey of adventure. One life. One moment to live. Passionately. Fearlessly. Wantonly.

The question is: Where in the world are you at when you're desperately trying to fit in? What pair of shoes can you cast off today to dance in the rain and splash in the puddles of this messy, wondrous, exhilarating journey of life outside your comfort zones?