What is my purpose?
What have I been doing with my life?
What would the last chapter of my autobiography look like if it were already written?
What will I do with my gifts?
My purpose in this life is to heal people. To give more love than I receive. And to help nurture the passions of people around me. It is through these things that I feel most fulfilled and content. It is through these things I will leave this world a better place. Or, at least my little corner of it.
With my life, I have done a tremendous amount of wandering around inside of myself, and my immediate surroundings, searching for what has felt true for me. Growing up, in my teens, I poured my existence into my Unitarian identity and experiences because it was the first place I found that celebrated who I was when I got there, who I was while I was there, and who I was when I left. Because of this, I put energy in my life towards creating that for others. I have not taken very many of the traditional paths that have come my way, and for a while, this bothered me. Until I realized that it is because I have done things differently that I know what I do, that I feel what I do, and that I would not have been satisfied doing it any other way. I have immersed myself in communities I never would have found had I gone straight to college. I have experienced ways of life that I wouldn't have had time for had I been busy "becoming my grown-up self". I have tried professions I wouldn't have found. It is through these experiences that I have learned a lot about what I don't want to be, and more than a little about what I do. None of these experiences even comes close to the experience of being a mom. By parenting my child the way I want her to be raised I have learned the kind of world I want to create around me. I have had to teach myself to be intentional about my life. The people I let into it, the food that I eat, the way that I speak, the way I show love. Everything. It is through caring so intensely for her that I have learned that my radical act of love and change in this world has to be through helping the lives of others, that is the only way it will feel genuine to me. I have been given a tremendous amount of love and support from those around me, in ways big and small, and for me to walk away from that and not pay it forward would be unfortunate. And ungrateful of me. I have been cradled at times I needed it most so that I could pick myself up again and keep going. It is through these gestures of love and generosity that I have learned just how much we all need each other. The walls that we as people and societies build up between ourselves do us no service. They prevent us from realizing how connected we all really are. They justify the times when we consciously choose not to be good to each other, and prevent us from seeing the damage we do to all, when we damage one.
I like imagining what the last chapter of my autobiography will be like. My life is a collection of stories already, what will it be like then? I will be an old, opinionated, content, crotchedy woman surrounded by the people I love. I will sit on my porch with Vanessa, wearing moo-moo's with our obscenely colored hair, being as honest and blunt as I chose; because I will have overcome my irrational fear of expressing myself at the expense of others to the point where it is at the expense of myself. I will have a beautiful garden that all the neighborhood will come to help in, to learn in, and to be in community together. The lives of hundreds of people will be healthier, and lived with more intention because of my work with them. My daughter will be grown, happy, and healthy, living out her passions with as much love and support as I can give her and as she will take. Hatchets buried, I will be at peace with the things in my life that did not go as smoothly as I had hoped. I will have traveled to many places and experienced many cultures and ways of life. I will have been of service to the people that I encounter. I will have known love of every kind. I will live in among the trees, in harmony with the earth and all the living things around me. I will be a modern day Mrs. Piggle Wiggle with a wild streak. Life will be creative, and beautiful, and lived.
With my gifts, I will do what I can to live my values and heal my surroundings. With my gifts I will draw in love, I will give away love, I will feel it all around me. With my gifts, I will help people realize their own, help them choose the life they want, help them realize it. With my gifts, I will create change and harmony. With my gifts I will live, so that others may also live.
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