How might I honor my desire to write and hold fast to the work of my life? That is one of the questions I have been living into in these last 12 months. Another one: How might I set healthy boundaries in a way that respects my needs and respects the needs of others?
Questions are doorways – they can take us from what is into what is possible. At crucial moments in our lives, we can lead our lives forward by considering the better questions, ones that inspire learning, growth and elevation, or a deepened reflection into what really matters.
Who am I in the presence of this? The driving resilience question, it brings us to a consideration of who we might be in the most difficult moments.
How might I care for myself so thoroughly that I am full enough to offer the world what I most want to offer? A self-care question that elevates both the mattering of the self and the mattering of others.
How might I cultivate a sustaining sense of meaning and purpose, even when all feels stagnant or all feels up for question? An inquiry that acknowledges the flexibility of meaning, it’s presence in ordinary as well as extraordinary days and our ability to re-cohere meaning at any time.
We can choose, in the early days of this new year, to pause and consider the questions that lead us from the current quality of our living and working into conversations that matter – that drive us toward understandings that inspire the best of us to emerge. With this wisdom we cultivate a life that is uniquely and powerfully ours. Without it, we are prone to be led by the conversations and questions of others – ones that may well be limiting, uninspiring, and inauthentic – that may keep us trapped in landscapes that are neither freeing nor life-giving.
In all my work, I seek to find the better questions so that we, in any of our conversations, might activate that sense of forward motion toward clear water, farther horizons and an open sky.
Love, Maria
