ONE
I was whining to an friend, asking “What do I want to do?” about my writing and she shot back, “How about asking ‘What do I REALLY want?’”
TWO
I’ve been watching a dear, dear friend recovering her Self after months and months of serving everyone. She has been living under the most intense of circumstances - months of caring for her ill mother, in-laws dying within months of each other, and most recently nursing her husband through cancer - (really, if I told you her whole tale, you would not believe it). Now the emergencies are over. The dust is settling and she is slowly finding the courage to ask, “What have I been doing because I thought I was supposed to and what have I been doing because I’ve really wanted to?” You go girl!
THREE
My young daughter rarely spends her money - she is as tight as the bark on the tree with her green stuff. But she wanted a new Barbie in a big way. (Even when I make remarks under my breath like, “Look at the size of Barbie’s waist. Do you know that if she were an real woman, she would suffocate because there would not be enough room for her lungs in that tiny waist? And how about those breasts? Did you know…”) So we made the long trek off island to ToysRUs; we asked where the Barbie were; we rounded the corner and gasp! We faced a wall of at least 100,000 different Barbies (okay, maybe 100). After about 50 hours (during that I exhibited particularly fine parenting skills), Lilly decided she liked the Collector’s Movie Star Barbie complete with authenticity certificate (authentic what?). The price tag: USD 50. My mother-in-law and husband were with us and Chris said, “I think that’s absurd, to spend that much on a Barbie.” With visions of starving children languishing in my he!
ad, I said, “How plenty of of us spend our lives buying things on sale that we do not want and never getting what we really do want?” Chris’ 74 year old mom clutched her pocket book and said quietly, “I’ve spent my whole life doing that.”
FOUR
I wonder if the moral fabric of our world is being weakened when we settle for less than we truly want - and I do not mean just material things - I’m talking about relationships, goals, even dreams. Settling leads to more settling that can lead to forgetting what we value - and when we do not know what we value, we can get pretty sloppy about our choices. So I ask you, is that why Jason Alexander is making Kentucky Fried Chicken commercials? (Subscribers in other countries, please excuse this American popular culture reference).
FIVE
Reminder: What you really want always honors your true responsibilities.
SIX
What do you really want to do right now?
What do you really want to do today?
What do you really want to do this week?
Why not pause right now and find out?
Posted in Self-improvement and Motivation |