Even Eagles Need a Push

"The eagle gently coaxed her offspring toward the edge of the nest. Her heart quivered with conflicting emotions as she felt their resistance to her persistent nudging. “Why does the thrill of soaring have to begin with the fear of falling?” she thought. This ageless question was still unanswered for her.

As in tradition of the species, her nest was located high on the shelf of a sheer rock face. Below there was nothing but air to support the wings of each child. “Is it possible that this time it will not work?” she thought. Despite her fears, the eagle knew it was time, her parental mission was all but complete. There remained one final task – THE PUSH.

The eagle drew courage from an innate wisdom. Until her children discovered their wings, there was no purpose for their lives outside the nest. Until they learned to soar, they would fail to understand the privilege it was to have been born an eagle. The push was the greatest gift she had to offer. It was her supreme act of love. And so, one by one, she pushed them and they flew.

We must remember that success begins when we understand that life is about growing; it is about acquiring the knowledge and skills we need to live more fully and effectively."

Isn't it funny the lessons we learn about life from animals? I wonder if it's because they don't play into the fear and games humans do. Animals don't try to out dress each other, they don't worry about the "haves" and "have not's", they simply exist. How do we learn to live more fully and effectively.

There is a book by David McNally called - Even Eagles Need a Push: Learning to Soar in a Changing World. The premise is pretty much the same as the story above....it's about learning to find the meaning and purpose of your own life. It talks about events that happen in our own lives that push us to higher levels both personally and professionally. No eagle is born an eagle, we have to push ourselves to higher levels and it's a hard long road. It gives me some sort of comfort to know that people, even accomplished, successful people have struggled along the same path/road and persevered and found their passion.

Like an eagle, we must continue on our path, leaping and expecting the net to appear.

Staying the course is NOT the same as clinging to HOW

Yesterday I watched a small bird, flying very fast, disappear into the canopy of an oak tree. So dense were its leaves that it was impossible to see what happened next, though I can tell you it remained inside.

I wondered how the little bird found its opening through the leaves at such a speed, and then managed to gently align its fragile body on the branch it chose to land upon, all within a fraction of a second. Not to mention the impossible to imagine flying maneuvers required: the banking, the curling, the vertical and horizontal stabilization's, the deceleration and landing.

Memory? Calculation? Not in that tiny brain. Instinct? Maybe, but how does instinct know which way the branches of a tree have grown when no two are the same?

That little bird just knew. It had faith, in spite of not being able to see how things would work out, that if (and only if) it stayed the course the details would be taken care of; that an opening would appear and a twig would be found. In fact, had she slowed down enough to carefully and logically inspect the tree first, the prudent thing to do, she would have lost her lift and fallen to the ground.

Kind of like reaching for your dreams. Neither memory, nor calculating, nor instincts are the deciding factors, but faith coupled with action.

Tallyho,
The Universe

Kind of like "Leap and the net will appear" kind of thinking. How does one garner the FAITH kind of thinking one needs to move confidently forward in life?

Officially now I am done with school. The final papers are done, the grades are officially posted, the party is over and now....now the rest of my life must move forward and hopefully in a direction that validates and utilizes what I've spent the last few years of my life pursuing. It's a daunting task. I wonder if kids feel this much pressure when they graduate college right from high school? Maybe they don't have all the life expectations that us "oldies" have. The life pressures we have put upon ourselves.

I always think things will get easier, that I'll figure it all out, that somehow I'll wake up and things will magically be better, different, easier.....but the reality is, it's not. It sure is hard to be an adult!

My own words

I like catch phrases. Words or sentenes that seem to fit any type of situation such as: sweet, fantastic, super fantastic, ass hat. I love using unique phrases to describe everyday events.

I've now discovered how much joy I get out of hearing other people then use my made up phrases out loud in normal conversations. Really, really brings me joy. Now I can't take credit for the phrases I use, some of them I've clearly stolen or adopted from others, some I have made up and some I just heard and adjusted and really feel like they fit everyday situations.

Some of my very favorites include, but are not limited to:

• Ass hat - used to describe bad behaving men folks (sorry, it's true)
• Super fantastic! - usually used to over emphasis the greatness of something such as the new candy display on my desk.
• You wish I were fatter so there was more of me to hate - no explanation needed
• Whatever - said with a sarcastic tone as if you are 4 years old
• J-hole - used inplace of curse words when children are present and you are suffering from road rage.....try saying it...JHOLE....it just feels right.
• The - as in THE Cub, THE Target, THE Byerlys....you get the point
• I'm just saying - when you are trying to tell someone something and worried it will hurt their feelings. Ex: Did you mean to do that to your hair? I'm just saying.....

These are some of my very favorite phrases and I really love it when others start using them. It makes me feel like in some small way, I am leaving my mark on the world. It's just words, words don't really mean anything and yet they can mean EVERYTHING.

Words create impressions, images and expectations. They help us build psychological connections and they surley influence how we think. Since thoughts determine actions, there's a powerful connection between the words we use and the results we get.

Validation

Last night was my first official Tuesday without school. I have waited for this moment, dreamed about this time and thought about it for years....and here it was...finally. It came without hoopla and faded into the night like any other day. Kind of a let down really. I guess I had hoped it would somehow be monumental....but the reality is, it's just another day.


I've been spending a great deal of thought lately on my own path. About finding it, being on it, falling off it, figuring it out and overall just the age old question...how do you know you're on the right path?


I woke up this morning at 3am bright eyed and bushy tailed, I went to bed about 11 pm and apparently I can exist on 4 hours of sleep?? Not really but my brain thinks I can. I woke up with my brain just racing. I can't seem to stop thinking and once it starts I'm done for. Ugh. Funny though the Universe always seems to know what to say to me:

Hold your ponies! Everything you've ever dreamed of, lies on the path you're now on.
Hi Ho Silver,
The Universe

I don't think we are suppose to stay still too long or to stay on one path forever. I think the idea is to keep moving, to keep looking, to keep on doing something that shakes things up a bit otherwise we get lost in the mundane everydayness of routine. Isn't that what finding a path is about, breaking up the routine, the mundane, the same-old-same old? Do we sometimes stumble across a new path because we are bored with where we are?

If I look around me I feel like everyone has a path, a purpose, a greater good.....I feel like there is some rule book that everyone has read and I am not allowed to even see the cover. It's an uncomfortable place to exist in. I need something new, something challenging, something to motivate me to keep on moving...right now I kind of just want to lay down and do nothing. It's probably just a phase, I'm sure I'll get motivated and start to move again but until I do it's hard to be in this place. Feel like I am going no where but really fast. When did I get so old?



I need to find the path and start walking along to see what happens. I think a theme song might help.

No idea what I am doing

It's going to take me a while to settle into a new routine. I realize it's really easy, at least it is for me, to ADD things to my life or my schedule or my day but taking things away really messes with me. I really don't know what to do with myself if I'm not preparing for the next thing. How do people live like this?

Last night I discovered TV again...well sort of....I got done with the ET and did a little cleaning then had nothing to do by 8:30 p.m........nothing. Usually I was doing homework or fine tuning homework or rushing to do research and there I was with NOTHING to do....so I turned on the TV. I forgot how many celebs have recently left us. There was some show on talking about why people feel so connected to celebs and why their death effects fans so much. I sort of tuned out but it made me think alot about why we connect to celebs. I can only speak for me but I always felt connected to in someway to someone who I thought would be fun to hang out with, someone who said or did things that made me think we could totally be bff's.....or they were totally hot. Like Antonio Banderas....he's just beautiful.

I think it's interesting when someone dies how you start to hear so much more about their life, the good, the bad and the ugly. It's really sort of sad how they really turn out to be really just like me in the end. They all seem to want the same thing, companionship, love, attention, friends, fame, money......just like any other person...they just somehow got lucky and got to be on a different track...but they mostly don't seem any happier or content than anyone I know who isn't a celeb. What a strange realization....they are just real people. Huh...who would have guessed that?

All I am hearing on the news and TV is about Michael Jackson's memorial, I realize it's for the living...for the grieving, for the world to say good bye but I say let the man rest in peace. Now I hear tickets to his memorial are being sold on EBay? Wild. It's crazy to me. He is gone, he doesn't have a clue what anyone thinks or feels yet he is still top news.

Although my message from The Universe sure ties into this:

And they shall say there once lived someone who had little idea of how they changed everything.
They will.
And, you have.
Tallyho,
The Universe

One person can change so much and they don't even know it. Is it possible to change things even as an average everyday person? Can each and everyone of us actually change things and not even realize it? If we don't realize it, how does anyone know it changed? It's like one of those number puzzles, you keep shifting the numbers around until they are all finally in order.

"When we choose not to focus on what's missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that's present...we experience heaven on earth."

Not feeling so alone

I had all of last week off, away from my regular job and since I am done with school the only real commitment, if you can call it that at all, was my job at the ET. I like that job. It doesn't really feel like a JOB.....it is work and some days it's way more work that I expect but overall I enjoy it.
Being that I had some time, I realized a few things. I am not as alone as I thought I was/am.

Not that I feel ALONE alone, just sort of alone in the way I think, I feel.....I guess in the way I am. I had no time constraints for an entire week....other than making a movie time or getting kicked out when the bar closed...hee hee. I enjoyed time with friends I don't normally get to spend time with and even though it wasn't pool playing weather, it was delightful. I had my 6 year old nephew for a few days, I played, I slept, I ate dinner in new places and overall I really enjoyed the week. I realized in talking with some new, different, strangers and friends that what I feel, think and am doing is really the same thing that pretty much everyone else is doing. Oddly, it made me feel less alone than I have felt before.

I am in a new phase of life, I am trying to hone and figure out what I WANT and what I want TO DO and what I want TO BE and I think it's time I start to hear my own voice. I need to learn to hear what it is I am trying to say....not what everyone else is saying or pointing me to.
For so long I have flitted along on some path, some road that someone else has walked and I blindly followed along thinking I would some how catch on, that I would connect, that I would belong but I realized that isn't going to happen. I have to find my OWN path...I have to make my OWN mistakes, I have to wander and fall and stumble and learn and grow all on my own. If I constantly wait for someone else to take the lead I'll still be here in this muddled mess for ever.

It's hard to be an adult. It's hard to try to forge your own path. It's especially hard when some of the people who have been in your life for so long don't want you to go on the journey. They are comfortable with you where you are. It's not like they are purposely trying to stop you but if you move on to something new and you grow and change it leaves things different...I know, I've been on the other end of that scenario a hundred times. I always feel like I am the one being left behind....but now for the first time I feel like I am actually leading the charge. I am taking the reigns of my own life and forging ahead.

I have no idea where I am going or what I will do, all I know is I can't stay here, in this place, this moment, this......life any more. It has to change.

The year of NO RULES has really been pushing me in new directions....I don't always like or enjoy what's happening but I am trusting it's all part of the bigger picture.

I had a week's worth of messages from The Universe waiting in my email and this is the one that really spoke to me the most:

What if you did have the power, the reach, and the glory?
What if you were given dominion over all things?
And what if eternity lay before you, brimming with love, friends, and laughter?
Yet still, one day, in all your radiance, bubbling over with giddy excitement, you tripped, fell, and got hurt - really hurt.
Would you give up on all of your dreams? Would you hate yourself? Would you forget life's magic and promise?
Or would you shrug it off, look ahead, and exclaim that it's "just a flesh wound"?
Touché,
The Universe

It's time to find out how badly I'll get hurt IF I fall.

Lessons from the movies

I realize there are lessons in everyday situations but when you go to a kids movie with a bunch of kids and watch a movie, it's a different experience.

I've been on vacation the last week...a "staycation". I didn't go anywhere but did spend some days doing some retail therapy and totallying enjoying the fact that I have no homework, no outside commitments...nothing happening.

I spent last Tuesday with some friends.....not at school and not avoiding homework......but chillaxing over some cocktails....nice. I can easily get used to this life.

Today I have my 6 year old nephew and we went to go see the new Ice Age movie. It gave me great joy that he shushed these talkers as the movie started...so proud. The movie is great and it has a message for the adults as well but enough action and silly stuff that kids enjoy it too. Those writers are good...plus it was in 3D so it was really fun.

The movie made me a little sad, the one dude Diago (the lion) was dealing with aging and another with being alone as his friends moved on in life with family and different priorities and I hate to admit it but it made me a little sad. Not because it's what I want but that a cartoon could evoke those kind of emotions from me.

My nephew was so cute....he'd seen the movie once so when there was a potential "scary" part (it did have dinosaurs in it) he'd snuggle in with me and make me put my arm around him. How quickly they grow out of that stage and moment. He was sweet and kind and now...he's turned into some kind of unrecognizable demon...he's literally jumping around and his new big thing is he likes to hit. He just randomly walks up and hits you.....no reason...just hits....it's not attractive.

Don't know how parents do this....how they get through this part of the night where the kids sort of unwind before bed. It's kinda exhausting.

It amazes me how much money people spend as a family at a movie....our movie was $21 for our tickets......$21!!!!! There were several groups of families there....add to that the movie snacks they purchase and my God.....that's outrageous. Crazy.

Well here's hoping we get through this night and tomorrow without incident.