Once awareness of The More infects your soul, the inevitable progression begins.
You recognize the mediocrities of the shoulds.
The ordinaries that once were unnoticeable fixtures in your daily life become boring. Annoying. Intolerable.
You question every decision you have ever made. College. Career. Certifications.
The blog you abandoned when it was judged controversial. The event you were too chicken to produce. The poem you never published because poetry’s not practical.
The house. The stuff. The basement full of clothes you’ll fit into someday and things you might use eventually and pieces of projects you thought someone like you should do.
The people you loved who left when you didn’t fight for them. The people who keep staying even as they complain every moment. The people who won’t leave but look right past you when you walk into the room.
You devour the stories of the possibles.
Books, blogs, twitter streams filled with people who have chosen another life. Who quit the job even though they had a mortgage. Who are living the life they consciously designed – without a trust fund, without being discovered, without launching to wild acclaim at SXSW.
People who got their book published. Who launched their charity. Who sold everything they owned to spend a year biking across the United States.
You ask yourself the questions of the why nots.
That person is not as smart / worldly / young / experienced / educated / tall / cute / well-connected / extroverted / weird as I am, and they still did it.
I could sell my car. I could start a blog. I could take a few weeks off. I could move for a year. I could write. I could draw. I could speak. I could start.
You imagine the potentials of the whats and the hows and the whys.
What you would do if you won the lottery or if you had to start over or if you were going to die in 5 years or if you knew you could not fail.
How your perfect ordinary day would be scripted – the loved ones you would be with, the art you would create, the beauty you would see, the people you would help.
Why are you on this earth. What is the meaning to your life. What are you really supposed to be doing / finding / creating. Where is your contribution. Why is this important. What will you leave behind.
But it’s all just thinking. Just fantasizing. Just wishing.
It’s all just bullshit.
Until you allow The Moment.
Now, The Moment is not the day you quit your job or sell the car/house or leave the abuser or pay off the debt or start the company or set off for your 100 day trek through the remote villages of Indonesia.
The Moment is not plot. The Moment isn’t a thing you do. The Moment is not visible to another being in our corporal existence.
The Moment is the decision.
Where now and forever you declare to yourself and Whomever is listening:
Yes. I must have the More.
No. I must abandon the Shoulds.
You declare … fuck it, I’m doing it anyway.
Even though you are scared to death.
Even though everyone will think you are crazy.
Even though you might loose everything.
Even though it goes against all the rules you have ever known, everything you’ve been programmed to believe, all the artifices of accomplishment you have ever worked for.
Because staying in mediocrity is a pain too exquisite to bear any longer.
Staying is agony. Staying is draining your blood from every pore. Bleeding you slowly, from a thousand cuts.
Because staying in mediocrity for even one more second means the eventual death of your soul.
Because now, you suspect. Because now, you hope.
Because now, you know the first edges of the Something you must do.
Because now, you know you’re going do it.
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Postscript:
Then this sickening tingle trickles down your skin, from your scalp down to your toenails.
Your stomach turns itself inside out. Your mouth waters, nauseous.
And you say to yourself and Whomever is (hopefully) still listening:
Oh. Shit.
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This is part 2 of The Live Your Truth Manifesto.
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Did you have your Moment yet? How did it happen for you?
I'm Elizabeth Potts Weinstein, an attorney, mom, writer, and explorer.