Five score and four years ago, I entered into this world for better or worse...

My 29th birthday is only a couple of days away, and I must admit I'm not as freaked out as I thought I might be about revolving around the sun one more time. I like to believe like most of the finer things in life, that I am only becoming better with age. I have paid my dues, and feel like I'm finally seasoned enough to perhaps score a seat at the grown up table on holidays.

It is truly incredible to sit back and think about where I was in life a year ago, physically, mentally, emotionally speaking. I spent endless hours fretting over what I was going to do with my life. Truth be told, I still don't know. The difference in how I feel about the unknown now, is completely different. I have become friends with the unknown. I have realized the more I try to force something, anything, the more it resists. It is truly liberating to let my concerns over things I cannot control become fleeting thoughts, sent running away by my faith which shoo's them away to where they belong, in the hands of what will be will be.
Don't get me wrong, I am not letting go of responsibility for things in my life, but I am letting go of thinking I can control everything then being disappointed when things don't end up the way I tried to force them to....its not realistic....

A very very watered down example of what I am trying to exemplify: You come home from work, and you have spent the last hour thinking about the jar of nacho cheese dip in the fridge. The second you walk in the door at home, you go to the fridge and go to take the lid off the jar. It refuses to budge. The harder you try, the more the lid does not move, and you become frustrated, cursing the jar, cursing your hungry belly, cursing the cheese for needing to be in a stupid jar in the first place. You are a ball of hostile energy at this moment, you are getting back exactly what you put out.....Then your roomie or husband or brother walks by, and in desperation, you say "Hey man, can you try to get this open?" and then something almost as infuriating happens....you hand them the jar and with nearly no effort at all, they twist and POP...its open.... and your left standing there with your mouth open. How come it was so easy for them? Because they walked into the situation with no anticipation of how it would end, they were not projecting the desperation for the cheese.... What do you call cheese that's not yours? Na cho cheese..............I digress.

I read "The Seven Laws of Spiritual Success" by Deepak Chopra this week and it was a huge help into putting positive thinking into useful steps or ways to identify whether or not it is working for you. Positive thinking working as a continuous force is far more exhausting than it sounds especially if all you have ever known is to let your thoughts flow freely with no regard to the effect of letting all of your negativity out into the Universe only to unknowingly have it boomerang back and catch you right in the jugular when your not paying attention. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. I'm trying to take this one step at a time. Now that I feel armed with knowledge on what to expect from becoming a practicing optimist, I feel as though success is within arms reach.
My goal for this week is to meditate for at least 20 minutes, once, if not twice a day. I have learned that trying to quiet the mind is not a simple task. It takes lots of intention. Chopra compared meditation to throwing a pebble into a pond, and watching the water ripple, and then watching those ripples fade away and the water become smooth again. In essence, this is what mediation does for your mind, makes the waters still. I can already tell that the more I practice letting myself let go, its becomes a way for my soul to heal itself.

So I think by 30, or TwentyTen, as I like to call it, I will have an even better grip on how this crazy thing called life actually works, and can work for me....29 better bring it!!!