Tuesday, June 23, 2009

messy, continued


not finis.
my thoughts are rarely finis.
here's the thing: if you're going to jump in with both feet, fully participate, get muddy and give it your all, this thing we call life is just plain messy.
if you prefer to stay cold, detached, and clinical, I'm sure it can be neat, better contained, more manageable.
but we were plunked down on the gameboard and given thoughts, feelings, desires, wants, needs, a breadth of emotion and a wealth of opportunities to express such things, and it just doesn't tie up all neatly in a little bundle.
those 6 degrees of separation connect us all with threads that range from silken, spidery wisps to mercerized cotton to bungee cords to links of soldered gold chain. and with those threads come thoughts and feelings and intensity and affinity and, ultimately, a great deal of soul work.
we are challenged to make decisions that protect us, enrich us, stretch us, and define us. what we choose to say and do impacts other lives. no man is an island, and none of us live in a vacuum. the repercussions of our words and actions ripple far and wide, jostling small boats and large ships and shorelines.
yet we cannot not move.
we are programmed to resist inertia and stagnation.
we are driven to strive forward and reach out with both arms and embrace our paths. with each step and each touch, with every sentence we utter and feeling we share, we impact the world around us.
and this is how it's meant to be.
messy.
imperfect.

yesterday a friend gave me a small plaque with this quote:
live imperfectly with great delight.

for months of this past year, I have had this tag line at the end of my email signature:
love imperfectly with great delight.

I attributed this latter quote to leigh standley, and I'm not sure where the former came from, and I certainly don't know if I accidentally (or accidentally on purpose) changed "live" to "love."
but what I do know, today, is that it doesn't matter because in the end, one cannot exist without the other.

live well, love well:
be messy, be imperfect, be willing, be brave, be you.

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