This is not the life I would have chosen.
A difficult conclusion, knowing that life graciously accommodates the few who bear the weight of making the safe choice. Others still, who are granted the freedom to live with the regret of making the wrong choice. And of course, there are those who are privileged to live outcomes derived from making the right choice.
There is, however, a distinct group of us who live lives where we had, and still have, no choice.
Living existences so far beyond the scope of our education, expectation, and preparation, it forces one to reflect, wonder, and ask themselves…
Were my dreams too small?
My childhood was spent in a gilded cage dreaming of adventure. In the quiet evenings, entertaining visions and aspirations of changing the world. A world I barely experienced beyond the narrations of books read, and stories told. Every fiction and non-fiction creating a wonderment. A desire to understand, to experience, and to explore. Nurturing an inner knowing. An understanding that my purpose is to bring change, break chains, and create anew. In gaining my freedom, to set others free.
Truly, ignorance set me on this path.
My dreams proved not to be too small... just an incomplete depiction of what I would face and what it would take, to bring my vision into fruition.
Not understanding the cost, and oblivious to the required sacrifice.
Each day, a testament to the cost of liberty. Each challenge faced, providing clarity as to the complexity inherent in captivity.
Not just my own.
Despite the periods of bewilderment, struggle, and obscurity, I am living my inner child's desired reality.
While the adventures have no glory, there will be light in the story my life will tell.
I have not been granted the option to settle.
Despite the challenges I have faced, am still facing, I am grateful.
In truth, how could this life break me?
I am not living for myself, I am living my inner child’s desired reality.
Valuing the spiritual and intangible, requires an exchange for the social. Shattering the illusions that our constructed realities have convinced us are absolute. The idea, that the climb to success is an ordering of status, rank, and wealth, rather than the cultivation of awareness, understanding, and insight. Life’s comforts leaving us empty and desiring for more. When it’s in embracing challenges and hardships that we are provided glimpses into our power to extract from the well of meaning and fulfillment, as we choose to develop the capacity to endure.
I will continue this path and finish what I have started.
I am not broken.
I am not damaged and shattered, as some might expect.
I am the creation of my inner child’s wisdom. I am birthed of experiences that have broken the previous versions of me, the versions who were ill-equipped to carry my dream into reality.
I am, finally, able and capable of birthing and carrying the weight of my vision.
I have become the strongest, most able, version of myself… and I am nowhere near complete.
This is not the life I would have chosen, and for that I am grateful.
What I would have chosen would not have allowed for the potential that is being birthed within me. The power and ability that is actualizing with each adversity, struggle, and hardship that I face.
I have learned to trust in the wisdom that my dreams carry.
In the pursuit of our dreams, we experience a peace and assurance that we are living the lives we were meant to live.
I was meant to live this life.
I was meant to combat and bear the weight of this strife.
Not forever, but for now. So I know, this too shall pass.
I trust that whatever, or whomever, happens next was meant for me, and is the next page in my story.
When you choose to live your life in alignment... You will gain that clarity, too.