Perpetual Me

Just like Leonardo Da Vinci's theories, drawings and experiments on perpetual energy, each day is a prototype for a new and improved tomorrow.

I like the trials and tribulations of the learning stages. I feel alive and vital.  Some of the lessons are tougher than others; yet, I always accept them with as much grace as I can muster, even if I am not too happy about that at the time.

This, my fiftieth year, has been wild and tumultuous and exhilarating. I have walked away from people and places I have loved to find deeper connections and richer experiences. There was no "end," simply a new page, a sharpened pencil and a new plan for me to live into. Before I reveal the new plan, here is what I have learned from the last prototype and related experiments:

1. The difference between what I "can" do and what I "want" to do is passion.

I found myself running four distinct businesses, none of which were lighting me up and having me leap out of bed in the morning ready to take on the world. They were all things I had done long before ... Before ... Before serious health issues left me in a wheelchair, with dementia, being told I would never function again. Before I was forced to retire from a career I loved, I worked hard for and I was proud of. Before I made the life-changing decision to move out of my home country and into a foreign land. Before ...

I moved to Indonesia to live a simpler life, without work and with complete focus on my health and wellbeing. In just three and a half years, I recreated the parts of my old life I had intended moving away from. Health and wellbeing relied on enough money to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly, as well as a comprehensive medication and treatment regimen. That meant finding a way to derive an income without compromising my body and mind.

I started with great passion - working with the good people of United Nations to find a way to bring together 15 tiny villages of Kintamani people, developing a common vision for a stunning tract of land registered as a geopark with UNESCO. The project gave me a reason to get strong, to get my mind back and contribute to others.

Herein lies my passion:

happiness is contributing to others.

2. Often what people "love" about me becomes the very thing they "hate" about me.

This passion for contributing to others sometimes comes at a price. Some of my inner circle question my loyalty to them as my attention becomes focused on those outside my circle, as I become the voice of those who have less. Insecurity, resentment and jealousy raise their ugly heads. There becomes a weird competition for my time, my energy, my love.

I attempt to juggle my own needs for living a meaningful life with the demands of others seeking my attention. They can wear me down and leave me experiencing being a failure because I don't know how to be great for those that need me and available for those that want me. I notice, I die a little inside.

I become small, cold, brittle. I am no longer lit up with the passion of delivering opportunity to people who won't ever know me, to suffocating under the weight of the expectation of obedient compliance from those that do. I find the things I want to do get further from me and closer to the horizon, replaced with the things I can do in order to keep the peace.

Herein lies my dilemma:

whose love am I seeking?

3. There is no greater loss than loss of "self."

Over three and a half years, I traded me for stuff I can do, which took the form of four businesses I wasn't in love with. Two were well established and made money. Two were in their infancy and relied on the others. None were an expression of me.

My self-expression had died a death of a thousand cuts. The irony lay in my having survived 13, yes thirteen, instances of heart failure; having climbed out of a wheelchair and learning to dance again; and, having retrained my brain to function without the photographic memory and genius intellect I once enjoyed. What more did I need to do to prove I want to be alive?

So, I walked away. I walked away from four businesses. I walked away from a long-time relationship. I walked away from that version of me that I did not respect and certainly did not like. I started again. I tore up the old blueprints, threw out the old inventions, and I spread out a new sheet of paper. I sat in silence, waiting for the space for new thought to arise, new plans to come into view, a new love of my self to manifest and thrive.

Herein lies my lesson:

I am enough.

There! I said it! I am enough.

Dear reader, I hear your concern about the roof over my head and the food in my belly having walked away from everything. Let me tell you about the latest blueprints, the latest invention and the latest experiments.

I built a time machine. It has taken me back to my early childhood, where there is nothing to worry about and everything is provided for. I am a middle-aged toddler, exploring and sensing and experiencing, without a care in the world. I've taken with me the lessons gained from so many failed experiments and, this newly acquired wisdom is opening up opportunities everywhere I turn. I have even created a new enterprise that is every bit an expression of me.

I am loving life and, more importantly, I am loving me.