InnerBliss: What Takes Your Breath Away?

A seed head from one of our clematis.

Listening to: My partner found this very cool site, and I love seeing that a band I enjoy -- or a singer -- sounds so great with no help.

Bliss: Over the weekend, we had a car for some family things and so we got to go on a couple of walks/hikes/bird outings. Very excellent. Pictures will be coming for many, many days from this weekend.

For a variety of reasons this weekend, I was thinking about people deciding to live lives that don't completely light them on fire, to say the least. So many people just settle, never push themselves, never really go for it. Whatever "it" may be.

Most people just go along, moving from duty to appointment to obligation and back again, without any thought about the larger picture. The larger picture being the fact that this is it. Even if you do live many lifetimes, this is the only one you know.

I can't begin to understand why this is so.

Then there are those of us who are trying to wake up from the collective sleep. This is hard. Think about being around someone who is yawning and tired; it's infectious. Usually, the best thing to do is leave that person to their nap. But what if the majority of people around you are walking around in comas? Then what? Where do you hide? To where can you run?

The best place, I think, is Passion and Bliss. Find those, and you will be forever inoculated against this slow death that we have deemed "life."

And yet, I receive comments and emails quite frequently on this site that people don't know what that main thing is for them. I get this from people in person, too. Friends telling me that they would do "it" but that they can't begin to figure out what "it" is.

I really don't believe that. Deep down there is dream that we have silenced or drowned and we are too afraid to rouse it or to apply any kind of CPR.

It's took risky, this living our bliss.

I mean, we might fail. Or people will make fun of us. Or we will look stupid or desperate or silly. Or: aren't we too old for dreams and passions and bliss? Wasn't that really meant for our early twenties? And besides, my dreams won't pay the bills.

You know what I think of all this: It's fear talk designed to keep us safe and comfortable if not slightly unhappy.

Let's pretend that you really, really do not know what your passion or bliss is. Let's pretend.

I can tell you right where it lives: in your breath.

Your breath will always tell you the truth.

If something makes your breath suddenly light and shallow, that is a clue. That is something "taking your breath away." If something makes your breathing suddenly rapid, that is also a clue. And if something makes your breath deep and calm and peaceful, a ha! another clue.

These breaths are all different, but they are all saying the same thing: pay attention to what is happening right this minute.

Some things that have taken my breath away (or made it calm):

This sculpture. The first time I saw it, it was just a photo. I turned the page in Time magazine; I was sitting at a desk in the English Department of my graduate school. I gasped. My heart raced. It was a hint about my need for beauty.

This place. I walked in and felt instantly at home. I've never taken a pottery class, but I think my response to the place had more to do with the productivity of the happy people. The organizing of and attending to creative projects in such a methodical and directed way. I could barely speak.

Seeing a hawk only feet away, having him look me right in the eye. I stopped breathing. It felt like time stopped. That was it; I was hooked. This was a hint about my need for more connection to, more interaction with the natural world. A city girl through and through, I was transformed into a birder in one moment.

Riding the harness in a catamaran. Dipping my head back into the lake and seeing the sky upside down. In this moment I felt free, free of the way I usually saw my body -- as something to be carried around. This was a hint about my need for physical activity that made me "stop thinking." Riding my bike, dancing, and yoga all do this for me.

And most of all, writing is when my breathing becomes effortless, smooth, and peaceful. When I am writing a story at my Olivetti, that is when I am most in and out of myself. There is no time; there is no "me"; there is only the writing, the act itself.

What about you? What takes your breath away and what do you think it is hinting at; what is it asking of you?