The Answer to How Is Yes!

            Sometimes you sit somewhere and listen to a person speak. They say something that just wakes you up. My friend Jana Stanfield said this yesterday: The Answer to how is simply yes!

            I love this quote, because we spend our entire life thinking about how we will get to our dreams. Most of the time our internal mind is saying NO because… we don’t have enough money, we are too old, we are too fat, we are too ugly, we have too many children, we should spend the money on the house. The answers are endlessly NO.

            But what if we just said YES! and began from there?

            I remember a time when I had just $155 saved in the bank. I was twenty-one. I got a telephone call from a great friend and mentor, who passed on this year from cancer. He asked me if I wanted to sublet his apartment in NYC for the summer while he was doing summer stock at Kenley Players in Ohio. My dream as an actor/singer/dancer was to move to NYC and work on Broadway.

            I didn’t think NO. I thought and said YES immediately to the call! NYC was my dream. It didn’t matter that I had only 155 dollars saved. I would figure something out. I would get the money before I had to leave. I would take the trip (even if I had to ride my bicycle) and get there. This is answering the call to a dream.

            But, I believe, that as we get older we tend to lose that fearlessness. If I were faced with the same decision today, I would probably say, there is no way I can afford to do that. But I also have a house payment, $3000 worth of bills a month, a mom to take care of, a partner to consider, a business that I have grown for years I’d have to throw away. There are many things at stake now that weren’t at stake when I was young. I get that. But still, sometimes our dreams aren’t as big as moving our lives to NYC to work on Broadway!

            Sometimes dreams are just as simple as buying a pair of skis and taking that ski trip you have been wanting to take for three years, but you have been letting every other person and financial obligation stand in the way of it. What would it hurt to spend a little money on yourself and take five days off to ski and let your heart sing? Wouldn’t it be worth it for your soul?

            I’m speaking to myself now. Because I’m the one who has snuck in a one-day ski trip in some hole-in-the-wall place like Paeoli Peaks, IN every year, because I just can’t seem to see clearly enough to make myself a true vacation.

            One day isn’t enough to get away and let your heart sore. You need the first couple days just to let go of your anxieties of work and separate from all the network of everyday chores to get to the place where your mind begins to explore the newness of freedom.

            I had that chance two years ago when I went to Key West and Miami for a week. By the end of the week I was jet skiing and taking boat tours and shopping like I truly was on vacation. I was carefree. I missed that part of me. We all need to experience that in our lives at least once a year, so that we can bring a little of that back to our everyday lives, don’t you think?

            I certainly do. So, the first thing I’m going to do when I get off of this computer is begin to envision my ski trip this year. I don’t care who doesn’t want to go. I’m going to make it happen, and I’m going to have the time of my life. I deserve it, as you deserve to have the time of your life!

            Say, yes, to your dreams today.

            Follow the Yonder Star

            We follow many things in life—Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Jersey Housewives, sports… When there was nothing technological to follow, history records that people followed stars. For instance, the wise men from the New Testament followed the yonder star to find Jesus’ birth. So, it’s safe to say that the study of stars and the mapping of them to show the future was once something people followed, especially those with a deep spiritual knowledge and thirst.

            I find it interesting today how we manage to forget something as vast as the stars in the universe most nights to turn on the television or computer and look at YouTube and follow our friend’s social computer lives, or worse yet lives of people we have no connection with or care about.

            I looked up into the sky last night just before the sun set. The vast array of colors spraying across my view was magnificent. Even so, I watched for a minute and hurried inside to follow something I had DVR’d.

            Life is not about simplicity anymore. If you think it is, than you have unwound from a very complex world and made it simple.

            When most people wake up, they start the day with news blaring, babies crying, traffic stifling, work pressure, money issues, and relationship problems—to mention a few. To life NOT complex, you would have to get a divorce, leave your children, get a job plowing fields in Montana on a farm far away from town, and, yet, still money problems might take away your peace.

            So, I think of why God, in this day and age, as opposed to all the thousands of years prior to our present-day lives, has made life so fast-paced and unusually socially connected. I mean, everyone is a call or a click away. Even people in the farthest parts of the world can be contacted on Skype and called and spoken to with full vision. We are a world that is going somewhere quickly, faster every day. The question is where are we headed?

            If we follow prophetic order, we may look to someplace like the book of Revelation and speculate that these are the final days before something cataclysmic happens to change the earth and all the people in it. Most of the book is a huge metaphor, so the interpretation of what that experience might be is certainly left up to you.

            If you follow your heart, as I do, you might be led to sit quietly and meditate, meditate more often, because you know that in the end, the Book of Life will be written in your heart. To read it, you must be quiet enough and patient enough to allow it to unfold. And to understand the language, you must sit with it and with the angels who guide you to learn of mysteries.

            I’m not afraid of the future. I’m hopeful, actually. I believe there are enough people like me who are looking for peace, searching for something beyond money and lust, and trusting in their hearts that parallel to us is a universe of thought, knowledge, and wisdom yet to be experienced.

            This is just a moment, a blip, perhaps, maybe even a dream of what’s to come. We will be translate and changed. The evidence is all around us in the metaphors of the universe.