It was one little sentence spit out at the end of our weekly Hangout discussion that still haunts me. I fell to temptation, on video, and yet you’ll never see it…
(No, I didn’t finally give up on recording and posting the conversations that a few of you check out each week. This latest chat with the fantastic, Melissa Ford, was special and poignant and lost, in some unexplained glitch of the digital Universe. Maybe it was too powerful. Maybe it was too rich with insight, and inspiration and pure in clarity, that it just smoked the servers it was recording too… or something like that 🙂 Prolly not…. ANYWAY, it’s gone forever, sorry )…on to the story…
Temptation has been a bitch lately. Among the feverish action and broad bounding steps forward we are taking in our own lives, temptations have sprinkled all the shiny new surfaces of my days.
Let me explain… “Since” my wife recently took a job as a teacher at the local high school. “Because of that,” I accepted new responsibility, and will be manning her post as manager and co-leader of our restaurant. Also, “I seem to be” coming out of my shell and regaining long lost confidence and even swagger, with more stuff to do, and problems to solve, as all men really love to do.
ANYWAY, I am beating around the bush here, and I want to make something clear. My life has ironically returned full circle, to a sort of ‘normality,’ that I haven’t felt in YEARS!! Lots of work on my plate. Lots of things going on. LOTS of moments that I am tempted to fall into an old trap. I even said something terrible, during the Hangout discussion with Melissa… I said this… “Because we run a Restaurant, we don’t get to bed, around our house, till Midnight or later…” YUCK! PUKE! I’ve returned to ZombieLand! SICK! I fell into the trap of NORMAL! (and not the good kind!) Melissa didn’t call me on it, but I felt it almost immediately…
Any time I follow the word ‘Because’ with anything other than ‘I choose to’ or ‘I’ve chosen it’ or ‘For now this is what I want’, I’m lying and victimized and being a big ole FAKE!! The TRUTH of the matter is that all things in my life, Are My Choice. How I react to all things, Is My Choice. All the Because’s and the Since’s don’t have anything to do with the circumstances or people or events I follow those words with. The words that follow Are My Choices. They are things and feelings and reactions and actions and releases and procrastinations and opportunities and missed opportunities That I’ve Chosen. They are not anything other than that… And I almost used my new life-shifts, to fall into an old trap. I’m too busy, to get to bed before Midnight… BullHockey!
I choose to go to bed at Midnight. Or I don’t. I may choose to watch 4 hours of Hoarders (for the first time ever, online) starting at 10:30pm and completely clean house instead of sleeping on a Tuesday night… YES, that would be, (and was, this week) my CHOICE!
I love sharing my shit here. I caught my own crap, during that one innocent sounding little sentence this week. Because, we run a restaurant, I don’t get to sleep early… blah…. blah… blah… BULL! It is this way, because this is how I Choose my life to be. Lucky me, that I got to see that BS story in action.
Now, does that help you at all, that I saw my own crap, when I started to ‘explain’ some circumstance to a friend during a conversation? I sure hope so! I’ve spent years and years and years of my life, doing that exact thing! I’ve talked with people and family and co-workers and bosses and all kinds of people about tons and tons of ‘Becauses’. We have a little barometer in our gut, that starts to go haywire, whenever we say or hear someone use a bunch of “BS Becauses.” It’s kinda funny that our higher self understands the truth veiled by this swiss-cheese white lie, that we pass off for ‘being realistic’.
I’m not being smart or mature or astute, when I give you some calculated example of my limitations and my weaknesses, after speaking slowly… and deliberately… the word ‘Because’… I’m just full of shit. I instead could say:
- I am choosing this right now.
- I want this thing.
- I don’t want that.
- I am choosing no.
- I am not willing to, right now, solve this.
- I am choosing to feel my fear.
- I like where I am at, really.
- I am a powerful person, and I have all that I really really really want, and that is good enough for me.
Ya know… stuff like that….
Instead, I can fall into what the cultural backdrop seems to accept as perfectly valid and even responsible behaviors of cowardice and complacency and just trying to be comfortable for the time until I die… Yeah, really.
I do that sometimes still anyway. I even choose to play this game, in certain conversation, purposely, to get along and even limit my exposure to the Victim-One-Upmanship-Game, that occurs out in the world. I wouldn’t however be okay with myself, if I didn’t ‘out’ my own crap in this little space. This little place where we can be released from the BS of Because, and finally free-fully OWN our own crap!
I won’t always do this right. I won’t always be a 100% OWNER, I could fail, and you could see that in me, or read it here too. I do know, right now, in this moment, that those times are chosen times. I do have the power in the reaction. This physical world around us, isn’t really an outside-in type of place. It looks backwards to us. Like we perceive the image in the mirror to be the real thing. It isn’t. It’s an illusion.
Our experiences (meaning our individual perceptions of life) aren’t a little hunk of play-doh that is beaten, formed and shaped by the objects, people and events around us. It’s the opposite. We are the shapers. We are conduits for creation. The world we see is completely malleable, and we LIE to ourselves when we speak otherwise. This mis-alignment with truth actually shows up in our gut as stress. We actually already know this. We are divine instruments that spiritually know when clarity and truth is spoken, and when it’s not. And anytime, we follow the word ‘Because’, with a ‘reason’ instead of our CHOICE, it hurts a little.
Melissa Ford, said something so awesome on our Hangout together. We shared that everyone has a shitstorm of emotion and junk and thoughts and fears and excitements and flushes of arousal (okay, I threw that one in 🙂 ) among their ‘normal’ lives. Actually all that ‘weirdness’ is what normal really is. She even went so far as to say this blog should be called www.normalforgood.com, because having all these crazy thoughts and junk is just what we all experience, yet rarely share.
I am that kinda normal, my friends. A specimen of such brutal, and numerous yellow-diarrhea-stained mind-monkeys, that I may be the most Normal person you know…
And I LOVE, (right now) that I’ve CHOSEN THIS. Oh yeah! It’s not because of anything other than that. P-E-R-I-O-D. I’ve chosen this. I’ve chosen this. I’ve chosen this.
End of story. It all is the way it is, because I’ve chosen it. It all will be the way it will be, because, I will continue to choose it. I always have. I always will. There is nothing else that exists after the word Because.
So, if you are around, and catch me falling, failing, not seeming to be winning at this ownership thing, know that I’m choosing that too. And you can choose what to do about it then. You can speak up. You can keep quiet. You can Choose to see another human being, trying and failing, or trying and learning, or just being human…
That is Your Choice.
Enjoy it.
🙂
Sincerely,
Aaron Nichols
Alright, ONLY click this video if you have a sense of humor, and ‘get’ the message I’m sending today… (Psst… it’s not, Because I Got High!)