Take Back Your Life!

Wednesday is upon me again. Time to answer Jamie Ridler’s fun and freeing wishcasting prompt, “What do you wish to make room for?”

I wish for myself and the world to make room for more serendipity, more happenstance, more adventure. Life feels most enjoyable to me when I’m winging it, making decisions on the fly, and trying to get lost. Yes, lost! Some of my best vacation (& essay writing) moments happen because I do not plan my every move.

The trend seems to be the reverse: to beat the adventure (and challenge) out of our lives, especially the lives of children, by scheduling everything down to the smallest measurable unit.

I took to wandering through life as a child, misplaced it as a young adult, but have rediscovered it as a middle ager. Makes for a magical life …

Muse thx,

Giulietta the Muse

I picked up a Hallmark card about nine or ten years ago. The kind of card that spoke to me in such a powerful way that I bought it for myself in the hopes it would spur me to change, to take some much needed action. It said on the front, “You have to color outside the lines every once in a while if you want your life to be a masterpiece.”

It caught me red-crayon handed. For way too long, I’d been trying to color inside the lines of my life without success. Try as I might, I could not color or stay inside the lines of rigid acceptability. I could not conform. It pained me to do so.

This card gave me the permission I’d been unable to give myself: It’s o.k. to do things your own way. It’s o.k. to be different. It’s o.k. to follow your own path.

As soon as I stopped trying to color inside the lines, my life situation improved dramatically. I stopped trying to fit into the world. Instead I began fitting the world into me. It made all the difference.

My only suggestion for the card? “You have to color outside the lines every once in a while often if you want your life to be a masterpiece.”

Do you know what I’m saying here? Have you ever felt hemmed in by societal lines?