Day 17 - What if you are nothing and everything?

What if some things are just too important?  So important that they persist?

That phrase "what you resist persists" has me ponderous this cloudy morning.  I have a lot of work to do today but a feeling I keep having needs a place to park so that I can focus.

I remember, years ago, having this very unique relationship with food and with my home, with music and with writing.  It was one of the happiest times of my life and yet I was so isolated.  The only people I really saw every day were co-workers.

I remember venturing from that place to meet people.  I moved, threw myself out into the world and met a gazillion people.  I loved them all, but struggled with that need to please and it was impossible.

Now, I work from home and I have the perfect home to unfold in my own way again and to really nurture myself.  As I've re-connected with that chapter and settled more into the life I enjoy I realized I had to become nothing to a lot of people to become everything to only a few.

When I look at who those few are, I see us all in mazes of our own.  We're all struggling to make the space for the lives we want.  We're all struggling with who we are and what's right for us (including members of my family).

This notion of tribe - it continues to surface in my heart.  A tribe that I can trust and love and be connected to, to belong to.  Realizing that my tribe doesn't look like any other tribe thats out there.  It's not defined by societal standards or sub-communities or ethnicities or sexual preference or religions or geographical location.

It's this very small hand full of people that I miss so much when not around.

Im realizing that some of my wildest adventures and craziest quests, involving tons of people and places (both real world and digital), have sometimes been to simply meet one member of my tribe.

These people are everything to me.  We seem to have one another's missing pieces.

This puffing up ... exploding and letting it all go and settling into a sense of self again.  I keep thinking this is about reinvention, but it's really not.  It's about being who I really am after a long adventure in mysterious lands.  After great battles and digging through coal mines I return home ... a little bit stronger, a little bit older and having lost a little bit of myself as well.  Then comes the building up for the next adventure, what ever it might be.

This building ... this self loving ... it's like making a painting you know you're going to hang on a wall someplace, to be on display for the general public.  You hope it will be well received, you hope it will evoke thoughts and feelings and maybe you hope it will be wildly successful, but Im feeling so strongly right now that it needs to be me next time.  Completely me.

And when I find that wall to hang it on, my dream today, is that amongst the crowd - the right set of eyes will see it.  I don't need it to be everything to everyone.  It can be nothing to many.  All you need is the right buyer for a piece of art, one high value buyer, and you've sold for a fortune.

In this metaphor that fortune is the right tribe.  The right people.  The one's who see me on the wall and the value of what they see without any desire to change it.  In fact, they'd hang it anyplace, anytime and love it with all their heart.

I have some painting to do in my spare time.  Already the feelings are coming up, generating thoughts, inspiration.  What will I put on this canvas Im making?  What ever it turns out to be, Im looking forward to being nothing to many and everything to the right people (the one's already there and the one's that will inevitably come).