I recently came across this beautiful poem by William Stafford. While I’m in a quite wonderful flow in my life and work these days, Stafford’s poem took me back to several powerful and decisive moments when, in the face of great challenges, I made my own choices and charted my own course.
Take a deep breath, settle into a quiet place within, and let these words speak to you:
Cutting Loose
Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.
Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past trouble.
Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path – but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on earth, again and again.
~ William Stafford ~
(from Dancing With Joy, ed. by Roger Housden)
Life happens all around us and through us all the time. It never stops. That’s just the way it works. Yet regardless of what is happening, we get to choose who we will be – how we will show up – and the relationship we will have with what is going on right here right now. We can fight against where we are and what is happening, or we can choose to “accept the way of being lost, cut loose from all else and elect a world where you go where you want to.”
Sometimes we cannot literally go to a different physical place right in that moment, yet we can go to a different place inside. And if we get quiet, listen, and feel, everything we need to guide us forward is there.
Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past trouble.
Practice getting to your steady center. Practice when life is good. Then when things get hard, your steady center will not fail you. No matter what is happening to you or around you, your steady center can hold it. I speak from experience. And I bet you have experienced this at least once in your life as well.
When the twisted monsters bar the path, choose to let that be your finest, shining hour. Feel the realness of being alive and making a clear choice in that moment – a choice that honors your truth, a choice that honors the best for all in that moment. Elect a world where you walk the path that you know is yours to walk.
P.S. If you need some support tapping into your quiet, steady center, listen to the “Point of Stillness” meditation on the Center for Transformational Presence website. If you want to go deeper, Chapter 5, “The Power of Stillness,” in my latest book, Create A World That Works, includes several simple exercises that can be a great support. If you don’t have the book, you can order it here.
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