Your Mantra Can Be Yum Or Yuck, According to Tom Robbins; You Make The Decison

There is a deep urgency to my life these days which has been informed by two things:
My grandson and my friend, Kathleen.

There is nothing which will perk you up and make you pay attention to life more than a baby and a friend who has cancer. You can quote me on that one.

And what I'm realizing is that no matter whether your life is brand new and you are learning to talk and walk and hug and kiss or whether you are older and learning to deal with radiation and chemotherapy, life is all about learning and I, too, am learning new things every day.

Let me tell you something- this life is way bigger than any of us know and we do create our own realities and the best thing we can do is to let our eyes and hearts and minds be open to whatever the universe has to reveal about itself to us as every damn day.

I am coming to this realization as a woman who is an admitted agoraphobic and who had thought herself settled into a sort of retirement after raising four children into adulthood. My job is done, I thought, as my youngest set herself off into the world and I settled down into a routine here in my dream house with my dream man and all of my dream children within arm's length.

Hahahaha! The universe said as I went and auditioned for a play and met new people and my daughter met and married her own dream man and they had a dream baby and my other children lived their lives and followed their paths and dragged me along with them, sort of, at least.
Hahahaha! said the universe as I started this blog and sent words out and became part of another community which became such an important thing to me that I dream of it, this blog-world.
Hahahaha! the universe chuckled as Kathleen brought me chickens.
Hahahaha! chortled the universe as I passed the quarter-of-a-century mark with my husband.
And even hahahaha! as my floors need mopping and I start reading a new book and I learn to cook the venison my husband brings home and old friends become even dearer to me than ever.

Ah yes.
I learned to say YES to the universe when it offered new paths. I remember the first day Owen was left in my care and I was so nervous that I almost had a stroke, almost blacked out, even after raising four babies of my own. I learned to say YES when Kathleen brought me chickens and when she called Freddie to set up an audition and when the people at the Opera House said that I could be part of that crew.
I am learning to say YES when I feel a need in my gut and I need to respond to the message that it sends.

But here's the thing- I am learning every day. I am still the woman who wishes she could stay in her house tending her flowers and her yard, picking up dead branches and perhaps venturing out into the world enough to buy plants for her garden. But I am learning. I was not blessed with the sort of soul that says yes. And my childhood taught me that saying no is often the safest way. But as I grow older, I am learning that safe is not always the right way, even for me.
Sometimes it is.
And sometimes it is not.

And the older I get, the more I just feel that I need to be open to whatever comes along. It's hard. Don't get me wrong. It's hard for me. But every time I say YES, something happens which makes my world so much richer that I can't even believe it.

And if there is an urgency, it is an urgency which promises that my part in the whole scheme of things is important, but not indispensable. I have the right and ability to say no, if I please.
And so the things I say yes to are that much more meaningful.

This is what happens as you age. You realize that there is so much more than you ever imagined in this life, no matter what your life is. But that the things you say yes to must be the things that your heart yearns for, the things that your spirit depends on.

And I have no idea why I have the feeling that passing on this stuff that I am learning is important, but I do and so there you are and here you are and now I'm going to go eat some leftover curried eggplant.

Yes.