Back from Italy... Does Life Always Have to be a DRAMA?

When I was in Italy, I spent a lot of time being quiet. Quiet on all levels. I remember once going into the church in Radda and feeling my heart race, and my whole body pumping from something that had my adrenalin going. I sat at the back of the church and closed my eyes, breathing fast and furious. I kept telling myself to calm down. I had remembered once a dear and close friend telling me that they could slow their heart rate down and I thought, if my friend could do it, so could I and I began to concentrate on slowing my heart rate. I started to feel my body slow down, relax a bit, then I focused on my heartbeat that I could hear so clearly. “Slower, slower,” I kept saying to myself. Eventually I was able to reach a very calm place within and sat being quite for quite a bit longer after that.

A bit of advice the same dear friend expounded was that I needed to realize my passions and build a life around that which makes me feel passionate and alive. The more I thought about it the more I thought him to be right.

Filling ones life with drama means you don’t have to be responsible for taking charge of your life and if you don’t take charge of your life and claim it, then you don’t have to be responsible if you fuck up or make a mistake. But in the end, it is not about fucking up or making mistakes, it is about giving life your best effort and pursuing that effort with passion.

Lately I have been spending time with a very special girlfriend. She is struggling with realizing her importance in this world and how to define her life by her standards not by everyone else’s expectations. My friend puts perspective to my life. She is a reflection of what I was and when I listen to her it is like listening to myself and who that person was these past 15-20 years. Being with her, talking to her, clears my mind as to the knowing of my truth (if that makes any sense). When I left her home this afternoon I thought to myself that all that drama was behind me now and although I wouldn’t trade the “suburban lifestyle” experience for anything, that is not the me now.

I still live in suburbia but more and more I pine to escape from the pressures of living a lifestyle that bases itself more on "material" than joy and love. As it stands right now, I’m not sure where my passions truly lie or have not given myself the opportunity to find out. I was always too busy caught up in the drama of trying to be something I wasn’t, for everybody else. That fact became very clear as I got in my car and pulled out of my friend’s driveway this afternoon. Perhaps also, I am a bit fearful to allow myself the bliss in realizing all my possibilities in life.

The great thing about getting older is that along the way you gain so many wisdoms (well most of us do anyway). I can honestly say I am happy to see the past behind me and pleased that I have learned from my experiences albeit some of those experiences have not been so pleasurable and I had to repeat them more than once to get the message!

I like writing. I think it one of my passions. God forbid that I let myself become good at it! Problem is, I think a passion should be effortless... but in all reality, nothing worth anything comes without effort.