This past week we celebrated the Fourth of July. A holiday originally honoring the ratification of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, most of us recognize the day as a time for summer activities, food, fireworks and family. This year I spent the morning climbing Mount Cameron outside of Alma, Colorado.
Separated from my partner, I was alone on the decent. Leaving me ample time for deeper reflection on what America’s Birthday really means to me.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
While I realize the words above have their own biases highly debated in modern culture; the definition of “all men” that excludes women, indigenous, and those of color, the reference to a Creator that left no room for alternative spiritual beliefs. But for today, I am just going to focus on the words at face value, as they were written. So indulge me with this request for simplicity if you will.
Life
Breathing in and breathing out. That is technically what life is - breath. And yet the reality is we all believe life is more than a series of breaths. Whether our life is dedicated to family, career, service or centered on ourselves, we all want the most from it.
I am in love with the term life. I see it as a living word, full of energy and power. I see life in the sunshine reflecting off the snow in winter, in the eyes of children, in my own words as they take shape on a page. I have strong ideas on the perfect ingredients of life. (More on this in a future post).
If you have read my first book Incongruent, you know I am dedicated to seeing life as an adventure. While books are a single point in time, often changing as it rolls along, this sentiment is one that remains timeless for me.
Unlike utopia, adventures are meant to have ups and downs. Adventures are meant to be messy, complicated, journeys of discovery. Life as adventure helps us mitigate disappointment or disillusion when we tumble to the valley and must climb again to the summit.
Liberty
The Oxford dictionary definition: the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.
These words, a rebellion from English oppression and a call for empowerment for a nation in infancy. But what does the state of being free ignite in our minds and souls?
I spend a great amount of time thinking about freedom. Blessed to live in a country and be born of a race and socio-economic concept that privileged me with basic freedoms, my thoughts can dwell in the internal meaning of freedom.
Green lights, flow state, lightness…these are all words I have used when speaking about my concept of freedom. It is a state of being where everything in life feels aligned, orderly, on the right path. These moments where we feel invincible, powerful. In these moments freedom is visceral.
The Pursuit of Happiness
Happiness. We toss this word around like a ball for a puppy. But do we really know what makes us happy? And if we do, are we brave enough to go after it? Do we have the strength to potentially flip our lives upside down to center them in such a way that they revolve around our version of happy?
The truth is, very few of us are. Me included. The tides of life are often so strong, it is simply easier to float along with the current once we have jumped into the river.
Certainly there are moments we buck the current. We change jobs, we get married or get divorced, we have children, we move cross-country, we quit drinking or pick up running, we find new friends or reconnect with old ones. We find ourselves at a place we know either implicitly or explicitly is making us unhappy and we change direction in hopes the new path will be the answer to happiness.
And yet as stated by leaders such as John Maxwell, William Arthur Ward and Mandy Hale, happiness is an inside job. It’s that simple and yet deeply complex simultaneously. There is no external factor or person or situation that can make us happy. Only we can do that.
But isn’t it so easy to blame our sour mood or less than ideal situation on someone or something else. A bad boss creates our unhappiness at work. A partner’s deficiencies detract from our daily life enjoyment. Financial struggles keep our dreams at bay.
Sacrifice
This morning, I sit in deep contemplation about my own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Sitting in a small mountain town, watching the sunrise and rolling over my options like marbles in the palm of my hand.
Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness - I want all three. Don’t we all? What am I willing to give up to have them?
Our forefathers, like everyone who made a leap of faith in hopes of a better life, sacrificed the status quo to obtain the new.
A year ago, as I stepped into my new life, I promised to right wrongs and correct mistakes of the past. With extreme clumsiness and imperfection, I have made this a reality. The top three things on that list: stop running, get healthy, live collaboratively.
In practical terms, I realigned my life to enjoy the space I am in more fully, loving the town and state I am in, rather than running off to foreign lands.
I have focused on taking better care of myself. Reengaging and enhancing my love of cooking, reexamining my relationship with alcohol. Finding peace in the quiet of meditating, praying and journaling again.
And then the hardest of them all for this innately independent woman - collaboration. I set out to rebuild myself as someone who needs not carry everything alone. Someone who is willing to postpone or compromise some whimsy in order to be with people I love in the places that they find joyful, even if I find them mundane. To care as deeply about those directly adjacent to me as those I in far flung villages abroad.
These are choices I have made. Choices that, at times, feel like sacrifices. But I make them freely because I believe they lead to my version of life, liberty and happiness.
Self Evident Truths
Everyday we wake up with a choice. To be happy or not. To find freedom or not. To embrace life or not. It’s our choice.
This is not to pretend we live in a Barbie universe. It would be nearly impossible to choose all three of these simultaneously in perpetuity. But regardless of the situation we can lean into one of these choices and build our best possible life.
Life holds moments of deep sorrow, grieving, pain, torment, regret. In these moments we still have a choice. A choice to lean into freedom - freedom to feel the feelings in order to heal from them rather than harbor them for longer trauma. Find a therapist. Go out in nature. Sit in the dark and cry it out. Whatever is needed, there is freedom in facing these moments head on.
Life holds moments of monotony. When work and adult obligations seem to steal away day after day with little reprieve. It is here we make a choice to lean into life’s small graces. To flip the script on routines. Take the long drive home and enjoy new scenery. Scroll for a new recipe instead of typical social media content. Wake up just 5 minutes earlier and lay in bed counting your gratitudes.
Life holds moments of grey. Not the deep unhappiness mentioned above but simply an overcast sky on our soul. This is, perhaps, the most common and most challenging choice we have before us. A choice to lean into happiness. To hold hands with someone you love. To listen deeply to someone else’s thoughts, whether trivial or groundbreaking. To enjoy the sunshine on a blue bird day. To do something out of your wheelhouse because it brings someone else joy. To connect with others even if just for an evening. Most important, to allow yourself a lightness of spirit to enjoy the moment, even if the circumstances are not perfect. To see life as an adventure.
These choices are connection.
These choices are adaptability.
These choices are resilience.