A Polynesian Dancer ~ Moorea, French Polynesia

Everyday we’re faced with hundreds of subliminal messages that our brain seems to just processes as surroundings. Covers of magazines, posters in shop windows, television, it all becomes a blur.

What makes art, words, images, standout from the rest? Is this different for each person? Over the past few months I have been asking myself some serious questions about what exactly it is that I’m up too, to be honest sometimes I feel like I really have no clue. I know I want to do what makes me happy but also feel like if this is going to support me one day and be my means of survival, it has to make other people happy too…

Over the past few days I’ve noticed different pieces of conversations with friends and colleagues, that have really resonated with me. Nothing out of the ordinary, just normal conversation. I’ve felt like there’s a hidden message, words like passion, quality, step-up, motivated, shaped, leap. For fun, I wanted to check the proper meaning for some of these words, perhaps it would add another piece to my puzzle. An online dictionary defines the word leap as 1. to spring through the air from one point to another, 2. to move or act quickly, 3. to pass, to come, to rise… Rise, the same dictionary defined rise as 1. to come into action, 2. to come into existence.

Perhaps this is my message? I don’t know for sure, maybe I over analyze (something my best friends know I would never do ) but maybe it is… I feel as though I’m waking up and seeing things differently, I’m thinking more about what actually matters and what doesn’t and my list is completely different than the things that mattered to me before.

Perhaps the true answer is right in front of me and I’ll clue in one day, or this is just a normal part of the cycle-of-grief I’ve been going through… But maybe, everything is exactly as it should be, I’m on the right path, doing more and more everyday to wake-up and rise.

I think the lesson here is that we need to pay more attention to what’s actually going on around us. Life, as cruel as it is at times, will guide us through our fears and help us achieve our aspirations. Listen to your surroundings and the voices of those who really care about you. Learn to red between the lines, a lesson I have just started to really understand, and the answers to your questions will become clearer.