"YOU'RE ALL OVER THE PLACE"

So many times in my life, in my professional life, I have heard this phrase directed at me. Along with "just focus." I am pretty tired of it. Because I always feel the need to have to defend myself, to show that I can focus as well as anyone, on ONE thing, on ONE project, if and when I need to...when it's called for. And when my brain and spirit have the opportunity to travel, to run free, to explore, to be drawn to a variety of sparks and inspirations, I like to allow them to do that. For me, that's where the creative and personal magic emanate from. The openness to see opportunities, and passions, almost anywhere. I certainly understand that it takes focus to manifest anything, to take it from an idea to a 3-dimensional reality. I am all about that, too. Yet I have come to realize that when people "suggest" that I am "all over the place", it is about there stuff...the limitations that can often arise from being, possibly, TOO focused, or playing in a sandbox in their lives that may be more limiting than they would like. It's so easy to happen. Work, life, family, any or all the above provide their own realities and boundaries. Yet it's up to us, for ourselves, to bring in as many of the 64 colors (or is it 128) from the Crayola Box as we want. To me, that's where the rich texture of life comes in, the fabric of my existence. Asking me why I don't "just" work on one thing is like asking a farmer with vibrant fields of many vegetables why he doesn't grow "just" lettuce...or someone with an exquisite garden, billowing with 20 different annuals and perennials why "just" roses are not enough. Our lives become the products of what we plant, and water, seed and nourish. I appreciate productivity and the outgrowth of manifesting results. And I long for even more in my life. I will, however, never lose my deep appreciation for all the gifts that come my way from living a life of passion and diversity on many levels. It keeps my brain, my body and my soul humming...all the time. I am blessed.

"I WAS OLDER THEN..."

"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

-Bob Dylan, "My Back Pages"

I was at a meeting the other day with someone whom I had just met, and a photo of the kids and me slipped out of my book. Taken on a Jersey Shore beach, the three of us enmeshed together, it's one of my favorite family pictures and it became the first holiday card I ever created. As Anna picked it up from the ground, she looked at it - seeing for the first time both my kids and me from another (recent) time in my life. "Wow, your children look beautiful. How long ago was this?" I told her it was 11 or 2 years ago. "You look so much younger now. Your wrinkles, your worry lines, seem to have disappeared." I closed my eyes and breathed her words in.

You see, I often feel exactly like that. Younger. Not Benjamin Button younger, but sort of something like that. Certainly wiser. And less smart. A very special man in my life, coming out of the heartbreak of losing a son in a car accident many years ago, said to me, "Be wise, not smart." It was the first time I had really given conscious thought to the difference between the two. I immediately embraced this notion, realizing how much being smart is a function, I feel, of the brain. Often of the ego. Having kids often is a great reminder of that. "I knew that first," one might say to the other. Or in school, relating how another student had come to the same (correct) answer, although much more quickly, "She must be smarter." As if that was really true, or if any of this actually matters. I actually like feeling less "smart" than I used to feel the need to be. Because at the same time, I cherish being wiser, for me it is reflective of, and more connected to, my heart and my soul, the parts of me that I have chosen to become closer to, to emBODY more, the pieces of myself that take me to a deeper place between me and me, and then to me and others. The more authentic self. To "feel" more than simply to "know."

Anna's comment had no agenda, her words reflected her visceral and spontaneous experience. She was seeing what I feel, and know to be true. That by releasing myself from toxicity in whatever form they may (have) take(n) - in relationships, emotional and professional paradigms, personal belief systems - even gradually, in steps, I have created for myself what feels like a real anti-aging formula. Not the external kinds I see hocked in every form of media. The inside-out kind. The bi-product of what happens when who we are and what we do feel integrated. When we are living passionately, authentically, emanating from within the essence of who we are. The manifestation of what happens when we say "yes" to ourselves first, and not compromise on our personal and emotional non-negotiables. When we continue to pick ourselves up even when we fall down, even if it's every day, because we are willing to be as good a friend to ourselves, and offer the best part of our wisdom to ourselves, as we would do our most loved ones. There's a breeze that blows through me now that never existed before, at least in this way, or as often as it seems to. And I am grateful for the opportunity to keep getting younger.