The saying goes: Living well is its own reward.

It gets thrown around when capitalistically wealthy people are talking about being capitalistically wealthy. However, it's never sounded like a money quote to me.

During my short, thirty-odd years on the planet, "living well" has always implied authenticity and happiness to me. When I was in high school, my parents were chastising me about something and they asked me, "What do you want?" in the exasperated tone they seemed to preserve for our interactions. I replied, "I want to be happy." My father quipped, "Everybody wants that, but it's not possible." My mother agreed.

Yay for my parents. Adding the pressure of misery to another soul.

That moment was one of my life-altering moments, though. In that moment, I saw that I could not look to them for an example of how to live. In that moment, I understood that I was alone in this world. In that moment, I began to live with purpose.

People say that everyone needs Haters. Haters help motivate you, keep you pushing for success. I don't like that mentality, but I understand it.

My parents are the force that keep me striving. I look upon my memories of them and vow to never turn out like them: miserable, sad, faithless. Because that's all it takes--faith. A little goes a long, long way. I used to say that the fact that I am forever hopeful and have a ton of faith is my only weakness. Now, I recognize that having faith and hope are signs of strength so great, even water couldn't wear it away. And, water's some powerful stuff.

I live well.

I'm not monetarily well-endowed, but I'm rich. Every day, I get up and decide to be the best me I can be. And, I succeed, because even when I'm in my Shadow Self, I am great. It takes a lot of authenticity and skill to be the meanest broad on Earth. I do it with pride.

I live well.

I don't always know exactly what to say, but I'm honest. And, when I speak, I speak from my heart. I speak with the intention of the purest sort of communication. Hear me and I hear you and we listen and grow. Together.

I live well.

I'm scarred, but scars are just proof that you've been alive. Life happens to us sometimes and that's nothing to be afraid of. Scar me, tear me up, rip me open. Just know that I'll keep breathing and striving and living. Even when you see me in the open casket...don't count me out. The life and faith and hope within me is too strong to succumb to Death.

I live well.

Because that's the only way I know how.

in the Now

I remember when I constantly lived in Fear, but it seems lifetimes ago. I remember when it was so easy for me to conjure feelings of anger and resentment. I remember it much in the same way I remember being an infant; I know it happened, but I can't really tell you what it was like.

Every day, I practice being truer to myself than I was in the past. I don't frame it that way in my mind, but that's obviously what I'm doing. I'm improving and improving and improving and due to the improvements, I've improved.

I've become someone I really admire and like. This is very helpful when I have my more insecure and sad thoughts, because I'm able to relinquish the more negative self-talk quickly due to the fact that I know those thoughts aren't my prevailing reality. As a result, I haven't been truly depressed this year. Maybe that doesn't seem like long, but when you've struggled with depression for 20 years or so, going six-seven months without a serious bout of it feels triumphant. Yes, I've felt sadness. Waves of it that lasted for a few days. But, no depression.

I try not to think too much about the Past. After all, it's over. At the end of each day of my life (around bedtime), I usually mentally go thru the day and make sure I've extracted the lessons I feel I would expect myself to have learned. If there is anything I need to think more on, I put it at the fore of my mind and resolve to think more about it later. I fall asleep thinking about why I'm unsettled by whatever it is I need to think about further and conversing with whomever it is that converses with me in those moments, shedding light on things and not allowing me a moment's self-deception.

Rarely, I'll awaken agitated. But, when I do, I know I need to do more introspection, more forgiveness, more putting-down-of-fear. And, it feels good to go thru this. Perhaps my mother was right: I'm a masochist.

But, this is how I know how to live in the Now. This is how I know how to take the Past, learn from it, and leave it in the Past, where it belongs. There was a time when I could not figure out how to separate the Past and the Now. There was a time when I lived for the Future, because the Past/Now felt so overwhelming.

No more.

I have to be firm with myself. When a thought pops up that may lead to sadness and delusion, I have to tell it to get out. When it won't leave, I have to practice Pranayama, recite mudras, reverberate Om throughout my head. This has not simply happened to me, this ability to stay in the Now and hence, the lack of depression. I work at it constantly. It is my job. My life depends upon it and I treat it as such.

There are really only two things I give this level of commitment to: living in the Now and Motherhood. I look at everything as Practice and there are some things I haven't practiced, yet, because I have found it more difficult to stay in the Now and do them at the same time (like be in an intimate, sexual relationship). Since staying in the Now takes priority at this point in my life, I've consciously released opportunities to practice those things. Over the weekend, I began an attempt at holding that against me, but then I remembered that I will have many more opportunities for that Practice. I'm in no rush.

I think. I mull. I analyze. Those are my constants, and so, every opportunity for Practice that I pass up is used as an opportunity to rehearse what that opportunity will look like in the Future. This helps build my confidence as I'm the sort of person who feels most comfortable when she can see the Past, Present, and Future simultaneously.

All of this happens in the Now. There is no other time for it to happen. And, because every Now is another moment's Past and another moment's Future, I am able to keep a wonderfully forgiving perspective on Life. Mine, in particular.

Sometimes, it amazes me how even the Past and Future are happening in the Now.

I'm cleaning my attic.

I don't know how it happened, but my attic got really cluttered. I guess I wasn't aware that I was storing so much up there. I thought I was doing a good job at keeping most of my stuff stored in my heart area, but nope. The attic is getting more than its fair share and is now in need of a good cleanse.

Thank goodness for mudras and meditation and prayer beads.

Thank goodness for love and forgiveness and inquiry.

Thank goodness I don't keep too much stuff in my heart, because I'm starting to question if it's easier to clean the heart or the head and I'm answering, "Head."

My attic is a good place to store stuff because it has windows. If there's too much junk up there, I can open the windows and toss the rubbish out. Where is the heart's opening? In all these years, I haven't found one. It seems that the heart has more of a pore situation going on. Things seep into it and things can drain out of it, but there's no opening up one, huge hole and just tossing stuff in or grabbing things to toss out. The heart is trickier to handle.

If I don't want to think about something, I can simply think of something else, go somewhere else, look at something else, listen to something else, etc. If I don't want to feel something...well, I haven't figured out how to stop feeling things. Not the Heart Things, like Love and... What else is a Heart Thing? Now, that I'm thinking about it, I think that's the only one.

It's funny to me how the heart (or what we call the heart) Loves and all other emotions stem from choices. I've been testing this theory out and reading about it for years, and it seems to be true. The nature of Self is to Love...everything else is a choice. And, what is the Heart if not the Self? So many words for the same thing. I get exhausted trying to differentiate them.

I used to think that when someone's heart felt heavy, that meant s/he was sad or somehow emotionally compromised. Now, I realize that a heavy heart is a heart full of Love. A heart literally full of Love...so much so that it feels like it's about to burst. These moments don't only occur when we're feeling happy, because sadness is just Love With a Twist. As is anger. As is fear.

I have to go, now. My heart is heavy.