When the dust settles and all the background noise fades into silence, and you're left sitting there by yourself, what do you say?
It's the thoughts that you have in these moments that decide where you will go in this new year. So, tell yourself a good story. Say to yourself that you've got gifts worth sharing with the world.
Before I was old enough to drive, I'd explore the shallow creek that ran through our big ole backyard. There I'd spend countless happy days catching crawdads and miniature perch until the sun went down. When I was even younger, I'd make toy boats out of cardboard and driftwood and wildflowers and send them floating down the steady stream of water.
After college, two days brought 19 inches of rain and I watched on my television set as that same creek flooded and carried on its back a building down what looked more like a river than Interstate 24. Disbelief saturated my mind, that those same banks could hold such a destructive power, flowing tens of feet above where I spent my childhood summers.
The places and people with which we're familiar are so much deeper than we can see in any given moment. We are a powerful bunch of souls, we could move buildings if only told.
It's a shame when we use it all just to keep the status quo.
We had dreams, each of us, and we swore we'd never let go of them. They felt a part of our being. We had causes that kept us from sleeping because there was so much more work to be done. We had businesses to start and new countries to move to. We had love waiting to catch us whenever we'd choose to fall. We had paintings expecting to be embellished, horses needing to be ridden and fields begging to be ran.
But somewhere along the way, voices whispered, or yelled, at us that our dreams were really quite silly. They told us that he was out of our league, that a big city was too harsh a place for a skinny southerner like us to flourish, that we couldn't do anything quite like she could. They told us that we didn't have enough money or we didn't come from the right family. They told us our skin was too dark. They told us that we were the wrong religion and gender, that we weighed too much and most certainly we were running out of time. The voices said that we should give it up now before losing what was left and embarrassing ourselves even worse.
We bought the drug they were selling, thinking they must be right to speak to us that way. And truthfully, our egos relished in the thought that if those voices were right, we wouldn't have to try and so we couldn't fail. So, instead of starting that salon, or getting that divorce, or dropping our addiction, we hid beneath our shields; we made comfy excuses into our beds.
Gripping tight to the habits we had, we surrendered to our current condition. Our dreams were now dangerous weapons that threatened our convenience of just getting by. We emptied our houses and schools of such arms that we might cling instead to the safety of naiveté.
Storms came and went but nothing like they said might happen. No wildfires or typhoons, just the occasional rain shower. Yet, worse a disaster those puddles brought. The death of our wisdom, the death of giving our gifts, the death to soulful freedom, the dying breath of you and me.
Until late one night, or maybe it was early one morning, probably after we'd worked too many hours or drank too many drinks, or been alone too many continuous days, we felt that sickness in our guts. Walking outside in the cold, we yelled up to the moon with desperate cries as if it might reply.
This is not the life we signed up for when we were young. We didn't ask for this mindset of scarcity; remember when we jumped into bottomless depths without even thinking! Our universe, our creator, our creativity instilled that in us. That extra something inexplicably linking us to one another. These dreams, these callings, these gifts are still there, aching to be shared.
Take a walk through the creek, find time to be alone. Inside of you there is a story, one you're already telling. You are not too old. You are not too busy. You are not unlovable. You are a beautifully designed creature who has lived an interesting life no one else has. Don't waste your time feeling guilty, get up and share your flood of learnings with the world.