Forty-two

One night I wore a dress that I was afraid, when I got home and looked at it, might have been a little too revealing. I remember thinking, oops.

Yesterday while riding with a friend of mine and talking about how much fun we'd had that night, she said, you looked like a fairy in that dress! And I was warmed by that, because honestly, I ought to look like a fairy. That's just how I feel, inside, in some secret part of myself. Or apparently not so secret.

She also said, later that evening, you have a lot of aggression. And I said, yeah, I know what it's about. And she said, yes? And I said, it's complicated.

It's not, really. I just didn't want to talk about it because it's personal, and I get defensive about it. I assumed she was meaning it as a criticism, but as we talked, I began to see that maybe she wasn't. Interesting.

Human beings have been interesting me a lot lately, not least myself, because I am not always sure of why I am doing a certain thing. Or even of what I want to do next.

And that is interesting. I am so used to being the shining example of the examined life that it's a little anxious-making to not know the why. I think it might be good for me. I've been approaching a big shift in perspective the last few years, and I keep drifting toward it and backing off again, because I am not sure what it means. Or rather, what it will mean in terms of how I live my life and what I do with the years I have left, however many or few they are. (I hope I have years; I'd hate to get "IT" all figured out and then die in traffic the next day.)

What it is, is this. I always knew what the deeper purpose of my life was, and knowing that, I assumed that if I didn't manage to achieve that, well, I think really I assumed that I simply had to. There was no alternative option. It was a Dream.

Which meant, perhaps, that underneath my big faith in the dream, there was a lot of fear. And the fact that there was all that fear meant I needed to back off from actually trying the thing. Because, in that twisted interior logic that so often drives us, if I never stuck my foot out and tried, I wouldn't really have failed. It would be a stalemate instead of a loss.

Dude, I am such an idiot. I am miserable for lack of trying the thing.

What I've come to is this. The Dream isn't the purpose of my life. Well, okay it is the purpose. But it isn't the only purpose. The other purpose - and maybe the bigger, more important one - is to be in life itself. To experience it. To learn about being human.

I've been doing very well at that lately, as confused as I may be in any present moment.

So, the big "If" that I'm looking at right now is - what if I put that bigger purpose in the center, and let the dream be secondary - just something to try because I love it and I feel drawn to it. What if I make that part of the larger whole of living my life, instead of making the living secondary to the dream-thing?

Blam. Pressure off. With apologies to Yoda, I think the truth of me is that there is only Try. Life is short, just give it a try, because it's fun, because you want to. Just for the experience of it.