Mixed Feelings

These may be fleeting feelings, but so they all are. 

Both ends of the spectrum can look bleak, sometimes you feel trapped. Being single and being with a partner can feel myopic and dark.

When you are single you must balance hope with reserve, caution with openness, dreaming with realism, the short term and the long term. No matter what we hope, we have to live with what we have, and we have to create and capture the situations presented to us. Being single is the ultimate practice of non-attachment to outcomes. You have to put yourself out there and being willing to be rejected over and over again. But being alone can be easy, too easy really. There is no one there to question your ridiculous thought process, your self serving ego. You never get any BS dished to you. But there also the endless, unstoppable searching...

With a partner you have the opportunity to grow, whether you want it or not. You will always be challenged, you have to think about what you say, what you do, how you think and how you frame your goals and life. It is a constant dance of words, thoughts, time, love, and vulnerability. We can only ask so much, but we can't ask too little either. We constantly have to be falling back in love, pushing it forward. Everything in our lives functions like this, it is either growing or dying.

Take a moment to recognize your fortune. If you are single, the possibilities are your choosing, if you are enraptured in partnership, give thanks you have someone to challenge you, something to focus your energy on that has long term gains.

Either way it is a dance with fire. 

The contentment of containment

Ever choose not to say something? It is just as important as what you choose to say. Censorship is an art. The conversation is the relationship(Susan Scott). What you choose to say is what defines your relationship, and what you do not say defines the boundaries of the relationship.

Conversations can follow wild trajectories, but fate is as malleable as clay(Joanna Newsome). If you want something to go somewhere, you have to have that intention and get the words out there.

Your conversation will grow inside the boundaries of silence. So will your relationships. Are you willing to grow unbound?

Break the silence.

A day at the river

What is clear is immediately in front of us. It is when these decisions fall to the past that their effect blurs. The accumulation of thousands of little decisions turn out to be the direction of our lives, and they all count. 

The water's low flow slowly shapes one side of the rock. During a flood it can shape an entire river bed, tumbling rocks in a tumultuous and powerful event. We need the ebb and flow in our lives to be shaped. We need to be picked up and thrown down stream, sometimes we need to be worn away in one spot. 

Just a little ways away a red tint of algae surrounds a rock. Only here does the river lend itself to this color. This chunk has found a happy home amidst the odd miliue.