LIVING with AWE

AWE:

"an experience of such perceptual vastness you 

literally have to reconfigure your mental 

models of the world to assimilate it"

Do you spend a lot of time thinking?

 I think about what to say. I go over what would happen if I said this verses that. I imagine the possible outcomes, then I rate them based on positive and negative possible reactions and outcomes. I think through as much as I can. What about this? What if that?

My friends, it is time we, as this blog says: "go after the things [we] want!"

Ryan puts it perfectly. We hold ourselves back based on what society expects, or what we expect from ourselves based on societal 'norms' or 'rules:'

"Don’t follow these rules of modern love. They’re shit. Imagine yourself at age 90 and filled with regret. Imagine being surrounded with “what if”s and “how come”s and not being able to do anything about it because you’re too old now, you’ve been edged out of society and the only thing you have left to do now is die. That’s what will happen to you if you keep on holding the love in."

Ryan is absolutely accurate! It's not worth the fight, and forcing ourselves to live according to expectations will get us exactly that: what is expected. I don't know about you, but I know that my desires are never so easily tangible and fixed as that.

My deepest desires have nothing to do with the most common measures of success: a high-paying job, a big house in the suburbs, the newest electronics. (Cue Little Boxes song! <3 br="">

What does that get me? Vacations scheduled months in advance and maxing out at 2 weeks per year, a mortgage which (let's face it) so many of us can't actually afford without massive amounts of debt, and some pretty gadgets which ended up making life more complicated instead of sophisticated.

Can that possibly the summation of success? Is the peak of my life as an adult limited to how much money I have, what I can do with it, and how well I've marketed myself in order to be a 'successful' business woman?

The answer is a resounding no.

I want so much more. My desires are based around a deep belief that I am in the world to do more that fit a consumerist/ business-based mold.

I am here to experience desire, AWE, and beauty, and then, through the amazing thing that is human connection and love, to share that with those whom I also share love. It is "the difference between disengagement and radiant ecstasy, between being unaffected by the here and now, and being absolutely ravished!" What more could I want?

The beauty of life means, as the lovely Jason Silva says in the last link: "to breath in --- to take it in, we fit the universe through our brain and it comes out as nothing less than poetry."


Let's promise, here and now, to live our lives according to what we actually want, what we desire. Let's take leaps. Let's change what we expect of ourselves and other to actually fit what we believe. Let's trust ourselves to obtain those things for which our hearts TRULY YEARN!!! The possibilities are endless.