choice

Let Life Dream You

/ James Browning

let-life-dream-you1“Stop Dreaming”. You’re not likely to find those two words in pretty script on some inspirational poster hanging in a CEO’s suburban office. You wouldn’t say those two words to your kids. But what if you were supposed to be doing something more beautiful than you ever could have imagined, something bigger than you ever could have dreamed? What if you only had to let go of your (and your parents’, your culture’s, your religion’s, your everything’s) preconceived notion of success to make room for a life lived truer and deeper? What if you stopped dreaming, let go, and let life dream you?

I dreamed of being a successful singer-songwriter. I dreamed of playing to sold-out arenas and talking to Springsteen on the phone about summer plans. And I went after it. So many people carry the burdens of their ‘if onlys’ and ‘somedays’ when it comes to their dreams; they end up twenty years down the road thinking that if only they hadn’t gotten married, or had the baby, or whatever, they could have gone after their dream and had the life they imagined. I had no ‘if-only’s.’ No excuses, nothing holding me back. I went for it.

I spent over a decade of my life chasing the dream through dirty little clubs, where my feet would stick to the thin pool of beer and vodka residue on the floor. And I chased the dream down the interstate to the next town, passing the littered remains of those who came before me who chased their own dream, caught it, and got what they wanted. And found it wasn’t what they needed.

I know what it’s like, because somewhere out there on that road I caught my dream, too. And once I caught it, I held on fiercely, but it was like holding a fistful of sand: the tighter I closed my fingers, the emptier my hand became. Around that time I got a letter from a woman named Emily, which started me down my own path of letting go of my identity, my self, and what I thought was my dream. I wrote a song with a friend about her letter, and that song evolved into a project that has touched more lives than I could have ever imagined.

Every step of the way, I let go of the dream of being a singer-songwriter, of selling out arenas and making summer plans with Springsteen. I started writing songs for other people to sing, about other people’s stories, which made everything less and less about me at each turn.

And I got out of my own way and began to trust the process, which gave me the most amazing lightness of being. It was as if life started dreaming me, rather than me dreaming about life. Slowly, deeply, beautifully, something bigger started to happen. I had the opportunity to work with some Grammy-winning friends I’d been dreaming of collaborating with for a long time. We wrote songs about other peoples’ deeply moving letters, and have traveled around the world playing the songs their letters inspired.

I can tell you that the world will be no sadder and no less hopeful if you let go of your own dreams. Birthdays will not be cancelled. Why? Because when you let those dreams go, they don’t disappear. They don’t cease to exist, because energy can’t be destroyed… only transferred. Dreams are fluid, ever-changing scenes of hope on a movie screen in your mind, so let them move and dance and be themselves. Let your dreams float out into the ether and find their true home. They may come back to you in a more beautiful way than you ever could have imagined.

When I was 19, I heard a story about an old man on his deathbed. As he took his final breaths, the old man grabbed the hand closest to him and said ‘I have lived my spring, my summer, and my autumn. Now I enter my winter, having never sung my song, because I have spent my seasons stringing and re-stringing my instrument.’

To me, that story is about sacrificing the present for a future that doesn’t exist yet, a future that may never come, when something beautiful could be made right now. The world needs your skill and passion and talent, and it needs you to do the best you can today. The rest will take care of itself. Today is what matters the most, not someday. The old man was waiting on someday, and never got to sing his song. You have your own song to sing. Stop dreaming about life. Let go, let life dream you, and sing. Taken from an article posted on February 12th, 2013 by Alex Woodward http://inspiyr.com/let-life-dream-you/

Thank you for the inspiration Alex. I am deeply grateful for your thoughts that showed up just when I needed them.

It is a risk to live fully.
Yet a much graver risk not to.
Brandon A. Trean

Reasons Why I Cannot Love You

/ James Browning

beautiful leaf wallpaperThe following was written by Kat George a year and a half ago for thoughtcatalogue.com. It’s well crafted and hit me hard, right between the eyes!

Don’t get me wrong—I think you’re great. I like to eat dinner across from you, quickly glancing down at the fork idly fondling my food when you catch my eye. I like the coy smiles that pass between us, and the way that once we’re both drunk you become brave enough to hold my hand, and I become excited enough to hold it back. I like it when my phone vibrates in the night and it’s you saying something completely irrelevant, just so you could text me. I like that you like me; I like what we have.

But I can’t love you. I can’t love you because I couldn’t love the one before you, and I wont be able to love the one after you. It’s not because you’re not wonderful, or because you don’t deserve to be loved. It’s because you’ve melted into those other ones—you’re all the same. None of the dinners, the lazy days spent in bed cradling each other’s naked bodies, the little things you whisper to me, none of it is new. I’ve heard and done these things before, the motions are repetitive, and my responses are habitual. I can’t love you because we don’t have that special… thing… that makes every one of these practiced encounters seem brand new.

I can’t love you because I’m measuring you against a yard-stick from long ago, and you keep falling short. Every movement you make, every tiny word you utter, I pick up and hold towards the sun to see if you’ll turn transparent and I’ll see him inside your skin. When he’s not there—and he never is—I know I’ll never be able to love you. I haven’t and I can’t move on; it’s not your fault. I know I’m being entirely ridiculous, but when he haunts my sleep and I awaken in the morning only to see your resting eyes and your mouth agape on the pillow next to me, I feel disappointed, and I hate that I feel that way. I can’t love you because I’m entangled in the past, and I’m still not ready for the future.

I can’t love you because you adore me too much. Every time I wish for you to stop flattering me, to stop agreeing with me on every little thing, to stop f#cking doing every completely nonsensical thing I ask of you, it makes me feel sick, ungrateful and mean. You’re wonderful for thinking I’m wonderful, but I can’t love you because you don’t love me for my flaws—you love me in spite of them. You don’t see me, you don’t even want to see me, for what I am—the ugly, pungent parts of my guts. You can’t and don’t want to tear these parts out of me while I scream. I can’t love you because you won’t defy me, because you won’t fight me when I’m wrong. I can’t love you because you don’t stand eye to eye with me and challenge me, demand of me, to be a better person.

I can’t love you because it’s too hard and I’m too busy. I’m so busy all the time; I barely have time to see my friends, the people I know I’ll be 80 with, if we all (God/ universe/ Mother Nature willing) make it that far. I keep trying to convince myself that you’re just not right for me but half the problem is I simply don’t have the time for you, and I didn’t realize my mental process was making these ludicrous deductions until a friend casually pointed out that I was a New Yorker now, and that New York was what was ‘happening’ to me. And here I was thinking I was just holding out for Mr. Right. I can’t love you because logically or illogically, my brain doesn’t compute having you any higher on my list of priorities.

I can’t love you because I’m happy on my own. It’s been almost a year now, and I’ve healed from the destructive force of a previous relationship. I’ve learned how to enjoy my own company and laugh at my own jokes. I can’t love you because if I do you’ll be in my bed with me at night, or worse, I’ll be at yours without my things around me. I wont be able to sleep spread-eagled, to eat crispy fried bacon in my underpants, to make plans to go out whenever I want, or to make plans to stay in whenever I want. I can’t love you because, right now, I’m enjoying my ‘me’ time far too much—I’m like a pig in sh!t. I can’t love you because for the first time in my life, I’m being selfish.

I can’t love you because I’m scared. Because I’ve been broken-hearted and I know the pain of losing something I love all too well. I don’t have another heartbreak in me, and sometimes when I look at you I imagine myself as a younger girl and I know I would have ridden into the sunset with you, had you asked, even if you were entirely wrong for me. I can’t love you because I’m so tired of love; its commitments and risks. I can’t love you because I don’t know if you’re worth the commitment or the risk and I’m not willing to find out the hard way, although I sincerely hope that one day I will be. I can’t love you because I don’t want to, and sometimes I’m afraid that makes me a bad person. By Kat George http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/reasons-why-i-cannot-love-you/

Change the reference points from “him” to “her” and just about every word here rings true for me personally, so much so it is unnerving. Such occurrences of unexpected introspection almost always bring me lasting insight. Thank you Kat!

I love you, with no beginning, no end…
Without fear. Without expectations.
Wanting nothing in return,
except that you allow me
to keep you here in my heart…
Coco J. Ginger

Freedom and Choice

/ James Browning

A futurist’s comments I read about fifteen years ago predicted one day the number of big stores where you go to buy things would be far fewer. The suggestion was made that instead of going to Sears or Best Buy to make a purchase, in the future one might pay admission to a “display store” that had one each of many things to peruse. A choice made could be bought on the spot but only with delivery later to the buyer’s home within a few days.

A couple of the major Internet sellers are experimenting with same day delivery in New York City this holiday season. Things are changing!

The futurist also predicted grocery stores much smaller than what we have now would become popular for two reasons: 1) Some people don’t like all the walking and searching necessary in big box stores and 2) a good number of consumers actually want LESS choices. Smaller stores have always been a factor for the inner portions of major East Coast metropolitan cities. Same is true in Europe to an even greater degree for cities and towns of all sizes.

Most people equate choice and freedom. It seems so reasonable. Freedom means you are free to choose, right? It means you are free from restrictions. If you can’t choose, then you are not free. And it would seem to follow that the more choice you have, the more freedom you have. But it doesn’t work out that way.

The more options you have, the more energy you have to invest in making decisions. Which shampoo? Which car? Which dress? Which restaurant? Which movie? Your energy and attention are consumed by these decisions, and you have less left with which to live your life.

What does choice give you? One answer is that choice makes it possible for you to shape your world according to your preferences. All this does is to enable you to fashion a world that is an extension of your own patterns. With modern technology, you can weave a cocoon of your preferences and rarely run into anything that contradicts them. You end up isolated from the richness and complexity of life.

What is freedom? It is the moment-by-moment experience of not being run by one’s own reactive mechanisms. Does that give you more choice? Usually not. When you aren’t run by reactions, you see things more clearly, and there is usually only one, possibly two courses of action that are actually viable. Freedom from the tyranny of reaction leads to a way of experiencing life that leaves you with little else to do but take the direction that life offers you in each moment. From an article in the Winter 2012 Tricycle Magazine titled “Freedom and Choice: Breaking free from the tyranny of reaction” by Ken McLeod.

Thoughts of simplifying my life are getting stronger year by year, which is odd since I have spent my adult life accumulating. In my last move it became readily apparent what a burden “all my stuff” has become. I’m a single man who lives alone in a home of over 3000 square feet filled with stuff that took two moving trucks and six men fourteen hours to load and unload. I only moved a mile and a half!

When I read what I just wrote, I feel a bit ridiculous made worse by the knowing I have a big rental storage unit for things my home has no room for. I am grateful for the growing realization and acceptance that one day all of my stuff will be someone else’s.

The model of ownership,
in a society organized round mass consumption,
is addiction.
Christopher Lasch

Don’t Waste Any of Your Seconds

/ James Browning

The slow misty fog caused a sparkling halo to surround the street lamps. Each shimmered with scattered rainbow. All I could see was wet with gentle rain that caused everything in view to capture light and glow with color. Only one car passed mine and no wonder, it was 4:55am. The length of my drive to the gym was less than ten minutes, but with heightened awareness I have cultivated, what once would have been hours worth of memories were catalogued in just those few minutes.

I passed a dry cleaner’s sign that with a few bulbs out spelled an unintentional word. Lights were on inside the donut shop and I assumed the bakers were busy in back making sweets for the day’s morning rush.

Stopped at a traffic light a policeman in a cruiser was beside me. He seemed lost in thought staring straight ahead. Maybe he had gone through a difficult and traumatic night. Or maybe he was daydreaming about getting home to crawl into bed next to the one he loved.

Lit up almost like daylight was the big hospital on my left that covers a city block and keeps growing and growing. The wet pink marble glimmered in the spotlights it was being bathed in. Driving past my memory bought up the time when I spent several days in intensive care there.  Thankfulness was immediate that was behind me. The thought was followed by a moment of concern for those whose illness placed them there now and the concerned loved ones of those sick people. For the good health I have, gratitude filled me as I stopped at the last traffic signal before my destination.

Usually  the radio on or a CD playing when driving, but the evening before on the way home I had turned it all the way down to take a phone call. The silence was bordered by the sounds of my car, the rain falling on the windshield and my wipers moving the water side to side. I could hear the friction of my tires against the water on the street; a steady noise that was comforting in some odd way.

My hair was bent and twisted into a bed head style since I had done little before leaving home except dress and make coffee. Sipping on the travel mug as I drove the last quarter-mile the realization came that I had come a long way to not care what someone might think when they saw me with my hair sticking up. I was pleased with my self.

I chose to workout with a trainer very early three times per week because I knew at any other time I would not stay with it consistently. Pulling into the gym parking lot the last seconds of my drive were spent thinking in the silence while  the wet world outside went  by. I was struck by how good my life is. Not perfect; far from it. But good; really good!

Taking the time away from relationships for a few years to truly come to know ‘me’, by myself, enriched my life beyond anything I could have imagined ahead of time. There is a sense of great satisfaction today for having endured what I had to go through to get here. Before my insecurity caused me always need to ‘be with someone’. The loneliness I endured in the recent past to become accustomed to being alone was the single most difficult thing I have ever faced. Today I have a whole heart and a calm soul that is comfortable in this body. Without hesitation I embrace life and am grateful for all its possibilities.

You can be the most beautiful person in the world
and everybody sees light and rainbows when they look at you,
but if you yourself don’t know it, all of that doesn’t even matter.
Every second that you spend on doubting your worth,
every moment that you use to criticize yourself;
is a second of your life wasted,
is a moment of your life thrown away.
It’s not like you have forever,
so don’t waste any of your seconds,
don’t throw even one of your moments away.
C. Joybell C.

Thoughts with Photographs

/ James Browning

How would your life be different if…You stopped allowing other people to dilute or poison your day with their words or opinions? Let today be the day…You stand strong in the truth of your beauty and journey through your day without attachment to the validation of others. From “Life, The Truth and Being Free” by Steve Maraboli

If you celebrate your different-ness, the world will, too. It believes exactly what you tell it—through the words you use to describe yourself, the actions you take to care for yourself, and the choices you make to express yourself. Tell the world you are one-of-a-kind creation who came here to experience wonder and spread joy. Expect to be accommodated. Victoria Moran

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.  Oscar Wilde

I am grateful to understand clearly the meaning of all three statements and profess my determination to practice them better this week than I have ever before.

If you had started doing anything two weeks ago,
by today you would have been two weeks better at it.
John Mayer

My Reason to ‘Rise and Do’

/ James Browning

When viewed as a whole, my life has been richly blessed. From love to a child to success and much more, life has been good. My life has had an ample share of heartache and difficulty but when viewed as a part of the whole, those times add contrast and color to the happier times. There are many splashes of color yet to be, but something to get up in the morning for is what keeps me going.

“A Man Must Want” by  Edgar A. Guest

It’s wanting keeps us young and fit.
It’s wanting something just ahead
And striving hard to come to it,
That brightens every road we tread.

That man is old before his time
Who is supremely satisfied
And does not want some hill to climb
Or something life has still denied.

The want of poverty is grim,
It has a harsh and cruel sting,
But fill the cup up to the brim,
And that’s a far more hopeless thing.

A man must want from day to day,
Must want to reach a distant goal
Or claim some treasure far away,
For want’s the builder of the soul.

He who has ceased to want has dropped
The working tools of life and stands
Much like an old-time clock that’s stopped
While time is moldering his hands.

I’m truly sorry for the man,
Though he be millionaire or king,
Who does not hold some cherished plan
And says he does not want a thing.

What is the spur that drives us on
And oft its praises should be sung,
For man is old when want is gone
It’s what we want that keeps us young.

It is my ‘want’ to express myself, be understood and contribute something positive that drives me these days. For each and everyone who even once reads what I write here, thank you. You are part of my reason to ‘rise and do’ each day.

My formula for living is quite simple.
I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night.
In between, I occupy myself as best I can.
Cary Grant

The Exploration of Desire

/ James Browning

Choice is the exploration of desire and then the selection of action. In every moment, you are choosing either to align yourself with your own true path or veer away from it. There are no neutral actions. Even the smallest gesture has a direction to it, leading you closer to your path or farther away from it, whether you realize it or not. Cherie Carter-Scott, PH.D.

Studies have found people who make decisions quickly, even when lacking some information, tend to be more satisfied with their choices than those who tediously weight out their options. Some of the difference is simply in the lower level of stress created in making the decision, but a good bit comes from how our brains are wired.

A conscious mind can hold a maximum in the neighborhood of 5 and 9 distinct thoughts at any given time. For most people the number of possible concurrent thoughts is on the lower side of that scale  in the 3-5 range. So generally speaking any considerably complex problem with greater than 5 factors can begin to overflow a conscious mind’s ability to function effectivelywhich can often lead a person to make poor choices.

What’s interesting is our subconscious mind is much better at juggling and working through complex problems. Those who intuitively “go with their gut” are actually trusting the work their subconscious mind has already done, rather than second-guessing it. They don’t rely as much on their conscious mind’s much more limited ability to deal with complex situations.

Whatever process we use to arrive at a choice, the satisfaction with what is picked will depend largely on whether one claims ownership of their choices. Feeling pressured into a choice or those made while feeling not in control are frequently colored negatively, even positive outcomes. Conversely, taking full responsibility for decisions can make even failing feel somewhat successful.  You’ll know you did your best and you’ll have gained valuable experience for next time.

Often I have commented I seem make better choices when I pay attention to what I feel instead of what I think. It is my belief I am naturally repelled by what I should not do and attracted by what I should do. However, it takes an ability to ignore to a degree the constantly yakking, thinking mind that spins all kinds possible scenarios and outcomes, even impossible and ludicrous ones. The knowledge that my feelings are, on average, a more dependable indicator of what I should and should not do has been a sizeable benefit to me. I am grateful for this insight.

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
George Eliot