Wednesday, September 22, 2010

I have to vs I want to

l have long commutes to my place of work,so I have some time as I drive to reflect on my life, my relationships, my dreams, my aspirations,what has gone right and that which has gone wrong,what I would like to change about myself and what I am content with or even proud and confident about in myself,my strengths,my weaknesses. Sometimes ,I think about a dream I had the night before and what the hidden message for me may be. Early this morning I had one of those dreams that is unnerving,though not catastrophic.I do not remember the content now,but is was long,arduous,circuitous, laborious.It was one of those dreams that felt so real that when I awoke, I believed the dream was my actual life and it caused me to feel desperate. I briefly fell back to sleep and and realized that the same feeling was occurring in my dream and indeed, to my good fortune,it was really a dream.I then ,out of nowhere started asking myself ,"how many things in your live have you had to do and how many things have you done that you really wanted to do?"As the screen of the many memories of things I have done in my life flashed before me, I realized that the list of things that I have wanted to accomplish and actually do or did was a short list, of maybe one or two things that truly mattered.It seems that most of my days are comprised of things that I have to do because it has been the right thing to do or as it happened if I did not do these things they would not be done by anyone else and they were deeds that need to come to action for good reasons.It seems that often when I have done things that I want or wanted to do,it has come at a personal cost to me or others in my life that was too onerous.So it seems that I have cultivated this "silver lining " attitude,trying to rearrange the "I have to's into I want to's".Perhaps that is the ultimate journey of adulthood , to find a way to be fulfilled, inspired and enlightened with the myriad of "I have to's" in our lives and turn them into something resplendent and sparkling that mirrors who we are,so they really become our "I want to's".
In your lives,dear reader,how much of your life is I have to or I want to......


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