Love Life!

I use to tell myself that I had every reason to love life. I convinced myself that I had it all, but I was lying to myself. I was missing something and I just had to keep pushing that feeling away. To acknowledge that "feeling" would have meant that the facade would crumble. Like many others, I just told myself that all was well and the heck with missing something. That denial lasted awhile until I just couldn't dismiss my feelings anymore. Then I woke up. It was like I had been living life asleep, filled with pressure to conform, dismissing my feelings and playing a role. When I woke up, my feelings became clear and I realized the slumber I had been in for many years. The denial of the past was not about loving life, it was the same story many people tell themselves, "You've got it good...a nice house, kids and career, so suck it up." I forgot the most important part though, to check in with myself and ask, "Hey, how are you doing?" I hadn't been doing well. Like so many people I see around me, I was ignoring my feelings. I see it everywhere. To love life, you have to honor yourself and your feelings. It's pretty difficult to really connect to the love of living if you are disconnected from yourself. Once I woke up, a love that I had suppressed came bubbling forth. I could no longer contain it. I guess you could say that I had been hiding my heart. Now that I listen to my feelings and actually let them teach and guide me, a love for life has emerged. It's also tough to just say, "I love life" when you are not honoring your own life. I've realized that to teach my children how valuable their lives are, I had to honor my own as well. Someone asked my recently, "How can I teach my children to follow their hearts, when I did not follow my heart." You teach through words and example. Wisdom comes through experience, so lessons can be passed down whenever you learn them. My daughter watched "The Princess Diaries 2" recently. I sat with her and discussed the movie afterward. In the film, the princess stands up for herself and decides as she is walking down the isle to get married, to call off the wedding and not marry out of obligation. She was not in love with the prince and thus the fairy tale wedding was a show. My daughter looked at me and said, "Why would anyone marry someone they were not in love with?" That's a great question, but one very rarely asked in society. I watched "The Art of Lying" again as well. The movie makes me laugh, but hits home once more this undercurrent in society to conform to expectations. The main character asks his true love, "What do you really want? Not what's expected, or what your mom wants....what do you really want?" She looks at him puzzled and stumped. It is a question that is tough to answer if you have never lived your life authentically. I know in generations past, many had to work at jobs they hated to support families and marriage was more of a contractual arrangement. I am sure that my grandmother might have said that marriage was not about love and would have made some remark about life being hard. These days however, we are blazing a new trail. We are starting to awaken and wonder, "What are we feeling and what is all of this really about." More information is surfacing that continues to reinforce the importance of our feelings. Not so long ago, even talk therapy had a stigma or only for people with "real" problems. That is just no longer the case. Many high functioning people are heading to therapy because they can no longer live in denial. Even traditional medicine is starting to admit, however slowly, that our emotions affect our health. Feelings can no longer be ignored. It takes a leap of faith to follow your feelings and usually means that someone will get upset with you for it. It's worth the risk, because its better to live your life following your heart then to end up disconnected, disheartened and frustrated for living a life based on what others wanted for you. You have this life to live and the journey of discovering yourself means you can become aware of the joys of living. Loving life means loving yourself and as you awaken, the journey suddenly becomes alive with possibilities. Wake up and start loving life!