The challenge of my life of late is just being. Not being something or someone but just being. It is so easy to get caught up in identification of titles, possessions and status. I have wondered if I would feel differently about myself if I were to suddenly become paralyzed from the neck down and be totally dependant on others. I would lose all the external attachments and be left only with myself as I am, the unchanging eternal nature of my soul. How much of my identity is attached to ideas, possessions and abilities? It is a good question to ponder. I enjoy living life, of being a partner to another person, the opportunity to parent children, the pleasure of eating out with friends, of being able to move and laugh and sing. I enjoy talking and listening, taking a walk, reading books and going shopping. I like to travel and wear cute clothes and get my hair done at the salon. I love soft blankets and good movies. I even enjoy working on occasion. All of these pleasures are part of my life and I am grateful for them. But if I lost each and every one of those joys not one part of who I really am would be lost at all. My inner joy and the pleasure I take in those activities exist inside myself as an insular and intrinsic part of my nature. While it is tempting to attach myself to the many wonders that are all around me the most freeing statement I can make about myself is this-I am.

What is the difference between falling apart and breaking open? It is a question I have been asking myself of late. Can I allow life to break me open? For example, one day  I was walking out of the portrait studio a few years ago and I had a baby on one hip, my purse over my shoulder, holding the hand of my five year old and trying to carrying a hundred dollars worth of portraits in my teeth. I was trying to keep an eye on my other children who were behind me and in front of me running through a busy parking lot. I was feeling a little overwhelmed and stressed. As I stepped off the curb I lost my balance and twisted my ankle falling hard to the pavement. I tore holes in the knees of my slacks skinning both knees to bleeding. I kept the toddler on my hip from hitting his head but it prevented me from catching my fall. It hurt, physically. But more than that I was embarrassed. I had this odd thought that adults are not supposed to fall. I decided to do something radically different than what I felt like doing. I decided to stay put, in heap at the curb of a large and busy parking lot. I decided to stay until I addressed the discomfort of the experience. I noticed several people looking at me oddly. I felt humiliation, shame, stupidity and several other extremely uncomfortable feelings. But that passed. I felt a strange sense of liberation as I sat there rubbing my knees and noticing how different life looks from down on the ground. I started to laugh. There was an openness as my fears about how I appeared vanished in the aftermath of my fall. By the time I rose and gathered my scattered items I felt renewed and opened. My knees hurt for sometime after the experience and I had to get my hip adjusted by a chiropractor but I have reflected many times on the inner experience that could have left me feeling raw and humiliated. Instead it was as if I endured long enough to enter a forgotten realm of freedom and self acceptance. Falling apart can be an opportunity to break open, let the light of what is fill the shadows of who we think we ought to be. That is true freedom; living in the truth of each moment no matter how painful it might be.