It feels so good to be home!
As you know, I love to travel. I love meeting, seeing, and experiencing different people and cultures... observing what inspires them and what drives them in the day to day living of life. If I go more than a month or two without some sort of excursion (whether that's a short trip to LA to meet with colleagues, or a longer one to Europe for pleasure), I go stir crazy. Travel has become my catnip, and there will always be a significant presence of it within the curated version of my Love Styled Life.
Lately, however, I've noticed something different... a craving to be still. A craving to experience a more simple way of being. A craving to indulge in my daily mediation, in my own mediation chair... to spend my morning at the local coffee shop (as opposed to the airport Starbucks), and walk along the rocky winter beach of Santa Barbara (as opposed to the unfamiliar sidewalk of a new city). All of this to say, I'm craving the comforts of home. My home. This bespoke version of home I've curated here in Santa Barbara.
Yesterday many of us celebrated Easter, and for the first time in 36 years my family (due to travel and other conflicts) decided not to get together and celebrate. So for the first time in my life, I was faced with being on my own for a holiday that is completely centered around family.
If I'm being honest, Easter has never been my favorite holiday... but the irony is, the minute I knew our family celebration was cancelled, I missed it. And missed it deeply. It made me miss my Mom, her Easter baskets and silly Easter shenanigans. It made me yearn for a time that no longer exists... taking me out of the present, and into a state of regret. A regret for the moments I didn't appreciate when I had them.
And while I allowed myself to sit in sadness for just a bit, I eventually snapped my fingers and snapped out of it. Living A Love Styled Life is a practice for well-being that calls us to choose our feelings and choose our perspective. So in that moment, I recognized my responsibility to choose and connect with what I truly desired to feel - the desire to feel a sense of connection to family for Easter. As a result, I did what I teach my clients to do: asked myself how I desired to be, knowing that I desired to feel a sense of connection to family. The answer came immediately, and was simple: make the short drive up the coast to Los Olivos, and spend Easter Sunday at my grandparents old church in their old home town, with their beloved old community. I recruited a dear friend to join me, and the day turned out to be pretty fantastic!
The lesson in all this?
Everything is a choice. Every moment a choice. And as long as we stay focused on the choices presented us in each moment, life will be whatever we dream and desire it to be... feel however we dream and desire it to feel.
In the service yesterday, Pastor Randall Day mentioned this when delivering his Easter Gospel: Don't look for the living among the dead. And I smiled inside. Because this is what Living A Love Styled Life is all about. Don't look for the living among the dead. Instead, look forward to life... to the life you desire to live... to impact you desire to make... and to the way you desire to feel. My challenge to each and everyone of you this week is to lead your life forward.... to the future, as opposed to backward in the past. Remember, life is meant to be lived and lived well. Simply stay focused on how you desire to feel and be, and everything else will take care of itself.