What do I want with my life?

What do I want with my life? A big question and one that certainly doesn’t have a simple answer. My mind is generally very active, there are always things flying around in it and I’m constantly thinking of things I should write about. Because for me thoughts don’t continue through to their end until unless I’m writing the words down because my busy head will without a doubt find something to throw right in the middle of the thought line to throw me off onto some other topic and forget about what I was trying to think through. And of course writing things down makes it more real, makes it last longer and allows me to really think and go back over it and think about it some more.

So what do I want with my life? I guess the easy answer, if there is one, is that I want love and lots of laughter. I want it to have meaning and I want to know that meaning deep down inside, feel it down to my toes, love what I do and do what I love, have passion for something big, follow my dreams, and be surrounded by people who know me, love me, and have their own passions. Life isn’t easy and I have no expectations of anything being easy. Maybe I have been through more than I ought to have to go through. But who are we to question whose experiences are fairer? How can we possibly say that one person’s life is more unfair than someone else’s life? But now I’m getting off topic here.

What do I want with my life? I want to write. I want to write freely, with pure abandon and no fear of other people reading what I write because it might not be good enough. I want people to read what I write because maybe there’s something in the words I put down. Maybe there isn’t. But that doesn’t matter. When I write my voice grows stronger and I find myself a little bit more with every letter, word, sentence, paragraph, page. I want to write a book about my life. Maybe it’s not a book anyone else will want to read, but it’s something I feel deep down that I must do. It’s not a question of if I want to do it or not, it’s just something that is essential to my soul.

What do I want with my life? I want more smiles than tears. But if I can’t have more smiles than tears, I want the tears to taste sweet on my lips and relieve whatever pain has caused them. And sometimes the best times are filled with tears that lead to laughter or the other way around. Sometimes things are so beautiful that they make you cry. And sometimes they are so awful that you can’t do anything else but laugh. The laughter is so important. Even in the darkest times, laughter can bring a spark that has the ability to light up the whole room and let you forget about all the awful things for a while.

What do I want with my life? I want love. I know I said that already, but it’s worth repeating because what can be more wonderful than love? I want to be in love but not make that love the center of my life, but rather the grounding that helps me find myself when I feel lost. I want a love that will make me feel safe and secure, accepted, good enough just as I am with no pressure to change to something else unless that is where my life is taking me.

What do I want with my life? I could venture off into the unrealistic, the dreams rather than the real-life hopes. And why not go off there, this is my writing from my head so I can go wherever I want I guess. I want to be well. I want to be able to throw away all the pills and IVs and make this lump of a port-a-cath in my chest disappear. I want to be able to jump in a lake without worrying about IV line infections. I want to be free to take a shower anytime I feel like it without careful planning around IV schedules. I want to spend my weekends out enjoying the world instead of recovering from the stress and strain of the week. I want to be able to put food in my mouth without worrying about the pain and nausea that I know will come all too soon. I want to throw my IV pole out the window and fill my room up with bookshelves full of great literature that I actually have a hope of reading (and understanding) instead of having organizers lining the walls with bags of IV medications, needles, and all the other supplies that have become my baggage. I want all of this, but I don’t expect it to happen so I will only write it here for the sake of writing it. And who knows, maybe some of it will be true…someday.

What do I want with my life? I want to sing loud and clear and have my voice carry to whoever needs to hear it. I want to feel the notes rising up from my toes and stream out of my throat with the kind of purity that only happens on rare occasions. I want to feel a connection with the divine in so many ways – through song, through writing, through nature. I want to watch the waves crash on the shore and watch so many sunsets that it’s all I can see when I close my eyes. I want to sit by the ocean and feel a part of everything, even if it’s just to feel like a speck in the universe. Even a speck is part of everything. I want to watch the stars come out after the sun sets and hear anything they might have to say to me. I want to look for fairies and feel angels around me.

What do I want with my life? I don’t know if any of this answers that question or just raises more questions. It’s such a jumble of everything that I can never know if it makes much sense at all but it’s there, it’s written down so that maybe my head can think of it as done and make room for more, different thoughts. Or maybe this is just the tip of the iceberg. Maybe this is nothing compared to all that is within me. I don’t know, and maybe I’ll never know for sure. But maybe this raises the question of what YOU want with your life? Are you doing what you want to be doing? And if not, why aren’t you? There may be a lot of time left to do all the things you want to do, but what if there isn’t? What if your time is more finite than you think it is and you are spending your time putting things off until tomorrow, or next month, or next year? Grab the moment and do what you feel you need to do. And always remember that sometimes the thing you need to do and the thing you think you want to do aren’t the same thing.

Yours,
Penguini