Photo: Paula Porto via Unsplash
Over Thanksgiving my best friend from childhood and her husband announced that they’re having a baby.
They made the announcement with exhilarated exuberance touched with a dash of trepidation, seemingly asking themselves inwardly “is this really happening – is it for real?”
It was exciting and heart-warming to witness. The de novo and associated rush of colorful emotion would be challenging, yes. It also seemed somehow adventurous and wild in the most magnificent of shimmery life-altering ways.
Now, attempting to make up for a lack of any navigational path buried herein, let’s back up to explain how they got to this point:
Step one: He and she made the decision to spend the rest of their lives together.
Step two: They proceeded to build a home.
Step three: They made the conscious decision to start a family.
Creative people and self-proclaimed free thinkers often shy from this chronologically-ordered and two dimensional blueprint for life. They may opt to design a cleverly-coded model instead, free from the entanglement of dangerous sociological norms.
You may think you know where I’m heading with this, but do indulge for just a minute.
Because whatever one’s personal plan may happen to be, let’s face it – at some point a prescription is written.
And whether we like to admit it or not, all versions of the future have common requirements in order to function as they should.
One of these requirements is the unprecedented ability to be bold.
Being bold requires us to escape the confines of the mind. It’s the place where things are incredibly safe yet thoroughly de-boned. Akin to the Thanksgiving turkey we ate, it’s pulled apart to the nth degree until there’s nothing left but dry bones and lonely gristle.
It’s the cross street approached at some point where we need to make a conscious decision. To either take the familiar road or travel a more unusual one that makes your brain shift and insides itchy.
It’s the point at which you actually consider things like staying indoors for the rest of your life.
Wouldn’t that be pleasant? How easy it would be – how glorious – to return home to whatever environment you’d like. To work on hobbies, watch Hulu, and not be bothered ever again.
How wonderful it would be to always have the option to sleep in on the weekends and order Seamless, having friends that are continually kept at arm’s length.
Which to some may not seem boring at all – but is it really breaking any rules?
My categorial “wild” was hanging out with musicians until four in the morning on any given evening. It was easy because there was never an exchange of reality, or vulnerability, or sweaty daytime looks. Only a pint of whiskey, maybe a joint, and sometimes (actually, often) french fries smothered in fancy ketchup.
It was the opposite of bold.
In reality, the wildest of life’s occurrences don’t involve playing ping pong with rock stars or indulging in all things subcultural or perpetually reinventing oneself in order to live that so-called indie life.
It’s about getting uncomfortable on the inside to become fully whole and indelibly authentic on the outside.
It’s the moment we decide to get itchy.
We can reframe our lives by breaking the rules society sets on our shoulders in broad daylight. Or instead we can break the thick, hardened rules we impose upon ourselves in the darkest of the night.
So –
Tell me what it genuinely means to live the life you’ve always imagined.
Would you upgrade your surroundings or yourself? Is it possible for us to change our views on the world instead of how the world actually looks?
I think back to my friend. All the way back to when we were little girls with big dreams.
After college she’d go on to pursue a meaningful career in medicine. (For what it’s worth, I’d always thought she’d be a pop singer.)
Maybe she never thought she’d be married with a child of her own on the way.
Maybe she never expected to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world with her partner in crime by her side and the opportunity to give back in countless ways.
By becoming bold she made it happen.
She pursued a path that lead to living an incredible life.
In my mind, that’s wild. And probably the finest version of normal there is.