Dancing With Life

I had an amazing conversation last night with someone I’ve known “on the surface”, someone who has died twice, gone through incredible life journeys, has had to climb back and rise from the rubble more than once; someone who is worlds away from where they first started as a child. The stories inspired me and feel like they’ve changed me somehow for the better. I heard about tragedy that led to a place of learning how to embrace and live in each moment as it comes, trials and traumas that led to a place where dancing, absorbing music and just shining an inner light for others has ignited a willingness to open one’s life to complete service to others. Through “me”, use me to change a world one little piece at a time is the lesson I gained from simply listening.

It’s a call I feel my mom instilled in me forever ago. A call to take the ashes or the shitty parts and pieces and raise those things up with love and life as the driving forces, the forces that know innately that everything, every little thing can be used for the good, for betterment of self and others.

I don’t know, nor will I ever really figure it all out, I don’t know if we are all here on planet Earth for a reason. I have my gut feeling we are. But I also have my doubts that maybe life is nothing but randomness and chaos. But the stories that weave themselves in and out of my life ignite my bones. They wrap around and tie things together and make sense out of nonsense and guide me to a feeling of wanting to sing and share smiles and laughter and ease other people’s pain. Those wishes become the fabric of life and take me away from an even-keeled center where there is little to feel, shallow waters;  where there is no depth into this expansive full spectrum ocean of experience. It all keeps taking me further into the highest highs and lowest lows and I emerge feeling baptized over and over by some kind of grace that is stretching me beyond comfort and ease and into a new dimension of absorbing life in ways I never dreamed I could or would.

The more I love myself, the more I love this life, the more I love others around me who have similar paths and ideas and dreams to express, the more expansive everything becomes. I might not have a lot of money, I might not have a mansion on a hill complete with swimming pool and servants… but I have stories and the hearts of friends that make me feel incredibly rich. Thank you life. Every day.