“Never mind searching for who you are. Search for the person you aspire to be.” ~Robert Brault

I have been struggling with the big changes that are happening in my work. The idea of the change, which feels light years away is taking shape and bears little resemblance to the fantasy I imagined in my head, although it fulfills all the requirements that I set for the change. I didn’t figure in the part about having to let go of the whole deal, I thought I would just get someone else to do the parts that I couldn’t manage.

I get glimmers of what it would feel like to really get out of the kitchen. Change addresses and start fresh. These are met with equally strong impulses to put my hands back on the pieces that feel like they are mine because they happened first in my imagination. I fantasize about something in between, a balanced blend of autonomy and interdependence. Like my other fantasies about how investment would look, it probably only exists in a balanced place in my mind.

Looking for a constant in any of these spaces feels like trying to hold onto sand. The more you try to wrap it in your hands, the faster the grains slip through. It is hard to get my bearings. One thing that helps is reminding myself to not take it all so seriously. Then I try to remember what I accomplished to get to this point. I want this to feel like enough, like a personal victory.

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“I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy. From the very core of our being, we desire contentment. In my own limited experience I have found that the more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of wellbeing. Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the principal source of success in life. Since we are not solely material creatures, it is a mistake to place all our hopes for happiness on external development alone. The key is to develop inner peace.” -Dalai Lama

The day was marked by ease and grace. I am in travel mode, on the road to a medical convention to share the wonders of Good Clean Love. These travel days can be stressful with so many details and unknowns mingling together; I have had many days, when what should have been easy was incredibly challenging, and other days like today, when things are so easy, that it seems just my presence is enough to make things click.

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“If I have the belief that I can do it, I will surely acquire the capacity to do it, even if I may not have it at the beginning.” -Mahatma Gandhi

I have been thinking of making a vision board all summer since first reading Martha Beck’s article in June’s issue of Oprah at the doctor’s office. The idea of collecting images and words from magazine pages and cutting them up into a collage isn’t new for most of us. Many middle school projects start this way and for many of us, putting together a collage of what and who we loved was wall décor. The whole topic came up this weekend as I finally cleared out years of old magazine titles that I have been saving next to my bed for a couple of years.

As I went through them, I knew I couldn’t part with them all without taking something that had made me hold onto it. When I shared the idea with Emma, my 12-year-old daughter, she was on board.  She cut as I continued to clean and before long we had a huge pile of images and words that felt like us.  Martha Beck said,  “When you start assembling pictures that appeal to your deepest self, you unleash one of the most powerful forces on our planet: human imagination,…Virtually everything humans use, do, or make up exists because someone thought it up.”

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“When people think of ‘science’, they naturally think of atoms, planets, robots — things they can touch and see. They know that subjective experiences such as happiness are important, but they believe that such experiences can’t be studied scientifically. That belief is dead wrong.” – Daniel Gilbert.

I often think about Daniel Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness when I find myself in exactly the situation he described in the book. Based on his work in the research science lab at Harvard in “affective forecasting,” which investigates how well people make predictions about the emotional impact of future events, the results of our collective capacity on knowing what we want and how it will make you feel is not promising. Humans are not terribly successful at predicting the reactions of our future selves to our current desires.

Our brains and our eyes mislead us. They conspire together to support each other in believing the distortions of reality to fit our expectations. Gilbert explains: “Distorted views of reality are made possible by the fact that experiences are ambiguous­, that is, they can be credibly viewed in many ways, some of which are more positive than others. To ensure that our views are credible, our brain accepts what our eye sees. To ensure that our views are positive, our eye looks for what our brain wants. The conspiracy between these two servants allows us to live at the fulcrum of stark reality and comforting illusion.”

What this all means to me tonight is that like most of us, it is hard to remember that the life we are having is precisely the one we choose, and frequently have worked very hard to maintain. But then you look around and realize that you thought it would feel differently, having achieved what you wanted. I am on the brink of some big changes in my work life and with my family. My children growing up and away still need to be attended as much as they want their freedom and the balance of contact is precarious and unpredictable for both sides.

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“Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.” -Samuel Smiles

Today included  a satisfying set of small steps that I have been working toward for weeks. For some reason, progress seems to happen like that. Our effort to move in a certain direction, to accomplish something gets stalled in details, endless negotiations, communication hang ups, unforeseen natural events.  Patience is not only a virtue, it is the only choice as we attempt to shape the world to our vision.  Then suddenly, there is a breakthrough.  Negotiations completed, raw materials arrive, storms pass and we are back on track.

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“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.” -John Milton

Long ago, when I first imagined selling love products I called them Sacred Moments. The first labels had a picture of a lit candle surrounded by ancient quotes on the power of physical love to heal the world. My thinking was that there is no moment closer to our source than the moment of deeply physically loving the person you love. Shared orgasmic experience is as close as we get to the divine. That kind of love is awe inspiring and acts on the body like a system reset button.

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“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” -Mahatma Gandhi

Today should not have required so much effort to stay positive about the changes in life. The interesting thing is how something that you really wanted presents limitations that you didn’t include in the vision of having your desired outcome. Change feels harder than you think even when you precipitate the change yourself.
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“When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren’t grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude” -Cynthia Ozick

I was searching for the feeling of gratitude for much of the day. I let it be a slow day, not jumping out of bed early to exercise, letting myself have quiet writing time at home, taking the dogs and kids on a walk through my favorite nature park. I accomplished the necessary and left early for a late afternoon swim at the lake. When the kids all took the floatie out, I lay gazing up at the blue sky and heard the warm summer breeze on the banks while the dogs resting on either side of me.

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“We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” -Paul Bowles

This thought often is my wake up call in life. It occurs to me when I am in the midst of a moment that is true. Today my son, on the brink of becoming a much older version of himself, walked with me around the park and lamented about all the time that my work takes up, away from him. I reminded him of the days he is gone with his friends, and the hours that I spend accompanying him to his athletic events, but still he was sad and hardened by a feeling of missing something.

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“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” -Havelock Ellis

Today was a closet purge. I finally packed up all of the size 10 pants and jeans that no longer close around my waist. I have been waiting to fit into these clothes for at least two years now, if not three. Some still had their tags on, so I know I must have been close to that size not long ago. It is a little discouraging, given my regular exercise routine and that I actually am conscious about what I eat. It is alas the inexorable march into midlife; my body, like the skin on my neck, is changing, too.

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