Have you ever wondered why you are here? What purpose you have? I ask myself this question all the time and still never come up with an acceptable answer or one that satisfies me. I have many people tell me I am here to heal and teach. This is what I feel in my gut but then sometimes like today I really wonder. A dear friend of mine and I were talking about how do you open yourself back up after a hurt. I told this person that after many years of being alone and really learning to love ME again that sometimes you just have to put one foot in front of the other and continue on. It has taken me 18 years to not hurt every time I look at Thomas’ picture or a memory of him resurfaces. It has also taken me 12 years after a bad marriage where I was always walking on eggshells to bloom into who I am today.
You know walking on eggshells every day is not a way to live or be in a marriage. I want that person that is going to come in and help me, be my partner, be someone I can lean on and dance with, someone that wants to go on adventures, someone that is not all consuming but understands when you need your space but is there if you need to fall. That walking on eggshells marriage was a very rough time in my life and one that I do not wish to go back to but where I learned what I wanted as I just listed out. This evening is an emotional roller coaster. I do not know why or if my soul really wants to tell me do I really need to know. Learning to accept, accept who I am and when I am. I know that I have lived many lives in the past. Some of those lives continue to affect me today whether I know it or not. Those old traits tend to rear their heads (I am not going to say ugly heads because sometimes it just is.) Hamlet spoke no truer words than when he said
“To be, or not to be-that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep-
No more-and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep-
To sleep-perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.”…… William Shakepeare
So do we sleep and dream? Dream of a new day, new life, new love, new whatever you want. I believe we do. Maybe that is why some of our past lives continue to haunt, no, stay with us. They are a reminder of what was and what could be. We do give pause. Pause to look at a new baby calf, a flower in bloom, a hummingbird landing on that flower in bloom to savor in its sweet nectar. I am in love with life! Life that is so tantalizing and ever so mysterious all at the same time. Life is a roller coaster, a hike, a swim across the ocean, a bird in flight all at the same glorious and magnificent space.
So you may still be asking yourself “what is your purpose?” Maybe your purpose is just to BE. Be that person that loves. That is the rock for another person. Is that comfort for a hurt animal. Is that bright light for a child that would never have known love if it was not for you.
I still do not know what my purpose is. I believe it is to listen with grace and dignity (to say Bless Your Heart in the kindest of ways-for us Southerners), lead, dance in the rain under a full moon, love like I have never been hurt, and just BE.