Thursday, August 28, 2008

Things are looking up...

There’s something to this business of feeling good. Interesting things happen when I allow myself to see the positive aspects of my life. It’s as if I have taken off the heavy coat of negativity and have replaced it with a funky little swimsuit. Like the kind I wore as a kid, day and night, during summer vacations. I didn’t even need to be at the beach to wear the thing. It was just the positive expectation I woke up with every morning that if I wore my fancy-dancy bathing suit something cool would happen that day and I would be ready for it! This reminds me that, in my core, I am a natural at this business of feeling the cheerful expectancy of my life as it unfolds before me. I remember I could feel this “Right on-Slap me five-I’m alive-Up high-Down low-Too slow!” good stuff all the time as a kid. It was inherent within me to be so playful. It was internally programmed, the obvious thing to do. It was regular behaviour, like breathing.

I understand that sometimes I forget to breathe. It’s the one thing my gorgeous voice teacher, Anne Scrimger, kept coming back to over and over again in college: “Don’t forget to breathe. Always come back to the breath.” The breath is the connection to everything that’s real and honest. It’s a light switch. You flick it on and suddenly you just see things differently. So it’s not surprising to me that I liken this experience of just plain feeling good in my body to breathing.

When I forget to let my breath flow down to my core (and I hold it up in my chest), I feel pinched off. It causes me to look back over my shoulder at the recent history of having been in a funk, having been anxious and having carried around that awful feeling of not knowing “how” all these challenges will resolve themselves. It feels as if I’ve been trapped in some kind of bubble. The air is thin in there. It’s not the kind of bubble I can see through either. It’s more like the egg that Mork zipped around in on “Mork and Mindy”. Well today, I feel like I’ve cracked the egg, stepped outside of its confining shell and welcomed myself to Planet Earth.

I like it here!

From my perspective in this moment, I can see the buildings through downtown Vancouver and the traffic humming along the city streets. I see the beautiful architecture of this one particular hotel and marvel at how solid though it is now, it was once just an idea in someone’s head made manifest and now here it is and I have the delight of gazing upon its splendor. I can also feel the grace still with me of easily waking before the alarm goes off and collecting 10 minutes of snuggle time with my slumbering husband lying next to me. We fit so well together. He lifts his arm to draw me close. I nuzzle into his chest, slide my leg between his and like two pieces at the centre of a magnificent puzzle, we just click.

I love the sound of my baby stirring in his crib as he wakes up just as I have finished getting ready for work. It’s as if he’s timed it out perfectly. He rubs his little eyes, and snuggles his cheek into the nape of my neck. We saunter down the hall and rest together in stillness as I nurse him in bed next to Daddy. We three are in sync. Then later before we dash out to drive me to work, we all play a game of catch in the kitchen with a foam ball of which Zachary has thoroughly mastered the throwing. (He is a glorious, genius baby who is absolutely astounding in his supreme awesomeness and I am not biased in any way, shape or form.)

Yes, I like this business of feeling good. I have no attachment to the outcome of things I once feverishly clung to for salvation. Yesterday, Bryce had an impromptu phone interview with the CEO of a company he’s been courting for a few months. I marvelled at the support and excitement I felt for him as a result of simply trusting in the process of life. Of knowing that this moment (and his interview) is just a fun part of the game, not to be taken seriously but rather to be savoured and celebrated. It was so invigorating for me to cheer him on and to be able to look at his interview not as a desperate, pressure-cooking means to an end but as an opportunity for him to state his intentions and his truth to the Universe and it just so happened to occur in that moment in the form of a job interview.

This must be what it feels like when I allow myself to go for the ride!

I wake up and see things differently. Today, I allowed the idea of a fabulous meeting between my favorite director/producer and myself to dance through my mind’s eye. I blew it up on my internal projector screen and watched as we exchanged ideas about the excitement of our latest projects. (And I actually felt the thrill of it while I pictured it unfolding!) Then we easily transitioned into a read for the lead in the series I’ve been desiring.

No big whoop. Just another day of relishing this wonderful new practise I’ve adopted called, I’ll see it when I believe it.

Believe it!

1 comment:

Bryce Norman said...

You continue to impress me. I love being on this ride with you, through it all.