New Year Resolution exercise from Suzie Bright.
1.Name a goal you have— any goal for the future, be it near or far, small or large, heavy or light. Whatever means the most to you at the moment.
Finish a 1st draft of my full length play.
2. Imagine yourself right after having accomplished this goal, in the minutes or hours after you’ve DONE it. You’re on the other side. It’s the day after, it’s behind you.
I’d feel light and accomplished. Ready to share my work with the world.
3.Write down the date you’d like to see this goal accomplished. Could be a day, weeks, months, years. Your ideal time to see it happen.
September.
So apparently once you do this, you have to look at nbr 2 because that’s your real goal ! And something inside tells you you can’t have that goal because of nbr 1. Wow. Okay, that totally makes a lot of sense. Because man, it has been a long time since I’ve felt light and like my work was worth sharing with the world. I think I have to finish my play in order to feel light, accomplished and share my work with the world !
So… one thing I could start by doing is allowing myself to feel light and accomplished and like my work is worth sharing with the world. Um, yes… that would certainly help the play get written. Because frankly, it’s a pretty heavy play and it would be a lot easier to write it if I could pick it up with a light heart and with the feeling that I am already accomplished even if I am not finished with it. Wow. This is a great exercise. Just awesome.
I’ve been in a slump for oh about a week. More like 2. The gum surgery. I am not writing these pages for other people… right ? Right. I just want to do them every morning and I don’t care if they make sense or not. I can choose to feel light and accomplished any time, regardless of circumstances. Wow. There is something huge to take on. I like it.
Another thing I want to take on is experiencing life through the heart, no matter what else is going on. No matter what I am doing or what I am talking about or who I am with. It takes something to be in that constant state of openness but that is something I really want to take on. Not only will it be required from my work but if I can practice it every day all the time, then my work will be that much better. That doesn’t mean I am not going to fail or suck at it. That is going to require heart and compassion toward myself, but it means that it’s something I can take on. And of course if I can add lightness and the feeling of being accomplished to it, then that should be great. I haven’t really felt excited about anything this past week. It’s nice to see that perhaps these days, my excitement lies in spiritual goals. I was lying in bed last night and I was thinking about what it would feel like to be in my 60s or 70s and have to think of life as potentially 10 to 20 more years of living at most. I was thinking about how easy it would be to be that age and look at your life and regret not having done many things. I was thinking about how with the ways i’ve been being and acting, I am setting myself up for that kind of failure. I am setting myself up for old age, where I look back and it’s not enough. What i’ve done was not enough. Because it will never be. There will never be enough years to be enough. There will never be enough doing to fulfill the human doing thing. But to be a human being. If you can just be and take on a certain quality of being as your way of life, then perhaps, there is a chance of being 60 or 70 and fulfilled. Perhaps there is a chance of not feeling like there wasn’t or isn’t enough time. This is speculation. I don’t know. I suppose I’d have to interview the older people in my life. Though of course it’s pretty scary to ask someone what their relationship is to the fact that they have at most 20 years left to live. But it shouldn’t be a scary thing. It’s a fact of life. What if it was just a fact of life ? I was lying in bed and thinking about all this. Then I started wondering what was wrong with me that I am 36 years old and I am lying in bed thinking about what it will be like to be old and closer to death. But then I realized that maybe it is a great thing to be that reflective. To look at what kind of old person I’d like to be before I am already old and it’s too late to try to be that person. But it’s never too late to be the person you want to be ? It might be too late to do the doing you want to do. But it’s never to late to be the person you want to be.
Perhaps in order to do, we have to be first. Because in our being, we make room for the doing. The doing just comes naturally. I’ve been in a course for a year that’s been teaching me that, but I haven’t really gotten it. I have kept on doing, trying, planning, scheming, hoping. And it doesn’t work ! But oh I keep doing it anyway. Because doing is the way. The American Way especially. I even got calls from my dad telling me explicitly that he was interested in hearing how I was being not how I was doing and I didn’t even take the hint very well. I had a call with my mentor earlier this week, where he was trying to tell me that my capacity to Be and who I know how to be is what makes a huge difference when I walk into a room. The capacity to Be with anything. That is what makes you, unique. You can be with anything, he said. Me ? Huh. Not really. I spend my whole life trying to avoid it. I spend my life thinking about what I have to do to be who I want to be. It’s freaking ridiculous. It’s so obvious that it’s something I forget all the time. Or maybe I never really saw it. I don’t know. But here is the trick, what does it take to be light and accomplished and to be that I am worth it ? It takes being light and accomplished and being that I am worth it. Too easy ? Maybe. But that is precisely what gets in my way. Because I don’t believe it could be that easy. I don’t believe that in order to be a loving person I just have to be a loving person. That in order to be whole, I just have to be whole. That in order to be at peace, I just have to be at peace.
But it’s the truth. There is nothing I have to do to be any of these things. I just have to be them. Every moment is another opportunity to be the things I want to be. It has nothing to do with doing. And all of you will argue with me until the end of time that it isn’t that simple, because if we all suddenly agreed with this truth, capitalism would collapse and our whole society would transform. In one instant.
