Osho #24: Authority

I read this title a few days ago and sighed and thought, well shit... I have nothing to say on this and don't feel like writing on it. Seems to be the case w/a number of these Osho meditations, but on we go.

I'll start by saying the first thought I had on authority was in the traditional sense of authority over us & I don't like it. Never have. I was one hell of a kid during junior high and high school. Holy crap did I lash out and fight against most any time my parents tried to keep me in line, told me I couldn't do something, or tried to get me to do something I didn't want to do. To this day, both Mom and Dad say they'd gladly have taken 10 of my brothers over me as I was a giant pain in the a$$. :-))) You tell me I can't do it and regardless of whether I really wanted to or not, I'd figure out a way to do it. I don't, however, find this type of writing on authority to be of much interest at this stage in my life. I've grown just a bit, thankfully.

What's more fitting now is to break this word down and connect with it's root: author. To author. To give myself the freedom and expansion to write my own life. I love this. We ALL control our own destiny. Well, yeah, certain things are out of our control. We can't force people to respond to us in a certain way. We can't predict all of life's ups and downs. But we absolutely can decide to show up for life and to the best of our ability to create the life we want. To be the person we want to be. You can sit and complain and wish things were different, but where the hell does that get you? Nowhere. Now, sometimes it's helpful to have a little bitch session and get things off our chests - I'm a huge proponent of that. But you HAVE to take action. That can mean moving on. That can mean trying something new. That can mean approaching someone. It can mean putting yourself out there. A million things depending on the problem. But at the end, we control our own life. We write our own chapters.

I got hung up on some financial stuff for a while thinking it sucked to have a tiny home in an expensive area, a horse whose monthly board bill plus medicine was killing my savings, etc etc. But in the end, I'm choosing to keep Mimo alive. I don't have to. I could have him euthanized as his disease isn't curable. But this isn't what I want to do. not yet. It will be someday. But not yet. So I finally sucked it up and decided I can't use this as an excuse to feel *stuck*. I have to remind myself of that a lot b/c honestly, I'd likely not still be living in Austin if I didn't have Mimo. But I'm not looking at this as him holding me back anymore. It's a choice. I can still move to Europe someday. If I really, really wanted to right now, I 100% know I'm resilient enough to figure out how to make it happen. So the fact is I either don't want it bad enough right now, there's not a big enough reason to do it, or it's just not the right time yet. Same with the house. I go back and forth on selling it, but finally decided to have this porch added b/c I want to enjoy it fully while i still own it. Life is so much about timing and I AM writing my own life. If there's something I want to do, I have an ungodly amount of stubbornness inside that will ensure I will always figure out a way.

I do know there are times I can bummed out and feel my life is all bleh and I'm not owning it, but by and large, i DO feel I'm authoring it. I'm writing it. hee hee.... I mean, here I am actually writing so i like that tie as well. But the things I want for my future... for me it's more a task of figuring those things out b/c I have ideas, but nothing I'm necessarily moving toward and making happen quite yet. And that's a problem for me.

I'll turn that into a challenge: knowing I can write the chapters to the rest of my life, what do I want them to look like?

I want peace. I want joy. I want beauty. I want to see new places and be blown away by what's out there. I want to maintain my deep friendships and grow new ones. I want love. Yes. I want love. I have love. But I want it with someone who is right for me and free to give it all back. I want to be who I feel I am inside and for others to feel that. I want to make a difference in the world. Even if it's a difference in only one person's world, it's worthwhile. I want to be strong - physically, mentally, emotionally. And finally, I want to push past those things that seem like boundaries - again, physically, mentally, emotionally. The times I've fought and stayed with something I didn't think I could possibly do and kept trying are the the times I learned so much more about myself than I could have ever imagined. We all need to do this. You take the risk of failure and hurt, but you know.... to read someone's life story that contains nothing but winning and positives, it's kinda boring. It's the hard times and struggles that are fascinating and to be forever cherished b/c it's in those moments that we are vulnerable and cracked open that we find our depth of character and write the most amazing chapters of our lives.