Are you being who you have become?

Am I being who I have become?

This question has been haunting me for a while. Not the thought that I haven't achieved what I set out to do years ago (although I'm quite capable of that!). Not the idea that I could have climbed higher on the corporate ladder by now. Not even the concept that I still don't have my dream house and garden yet.

In so many ways, my life is incredibly blessed. I have a wonderful family, healthy and active. I have a home I enjoy and friends to enjoy it with. I have work that I enjoy and colleagues that make Monday a reunion rather than a horror. And yet...

I wonder...

I wonder if I'm being who I have become over the years. I have changed, but I'm not sure that I'm living those changes fully. Life and its joys and challenges have changed me, strengthened me. They have also awoken in me a longing for something more. The visible representations of my dreams might be similar to what they were in the past, but somehow, there is a voice in me that is challenging me to take on something more... because I can... because I have changed and grown and am not fully being that new person...yet.

So my challenge to myself in 2012 is to be more fully who I have become, to be this stronger, more compassionate and more rooted person, to take on things that previously were too big and scary. To remind myself that I am now able to handle bigger and scarier things with grace and to open myself up to the world just a little bit more.

My challenge to us all then, is to fully face ourselves as we have become and to ask ourselves as we move through this year 2012: Am I being all of who I have become?

Creation empowers

I was sitting today and crafting some Christmas gifts - some would call them art, others craft - it really doesn't matter. It was a beautiful moment. A cup of tea, a bin of colorful yarn, the weak winter sun peaking out from behind a bank of clouds and a few minutes devoid of demands from others... and then it occurred to me... this act of creation, no matter how small, was empowering in a way that big actions, 'important' actions and endless meetings and presentations are not.

This act of creation, of taking something and enhancing it, making something more of it, is extraordinarily powerful. It takes us from being consumers - of objects, food, experiences and entertainment, where our power lies in how much we can spend, absorb, digest - to being the ultimate powerful beings, making something out of nothing...

I have a friend going through a difficult time - a number of things in her life aren't going the way that she planned, from her health to her career. At this time, she's feeling powerless in her fight to retain her sense of self, and her hope that her life will still move in a direction she'll recognize, and that she'll recognize herself as she adjusts to this life that looks so different from the one she imagined. Amid this feeling of betrayal by life, this feeling that perhaps we actually aren't in control and can't attract the circumstances and situations we desire, she's feeling hopeless and weak. I can think of no better time to begin to create... anything. Why? Because it isn't even about what we create (a meal, a home, a memo, a piece of art or a scarf from lovely yarn), it's the act of creation. It reminds us of our power.

So let's unite in creation without expectation or judgment. Let's not create because we want to prove anything to anyone. Let's not create only when we're 'artists.' Let us create because it reminds us that at our core, we are powerful, we are divine, we ARE the Creator.