Body | The Direction of Intention

Ache If You Dare

Posted on July 22, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

500. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Have you ever loved so much that you ached? Once, I stood atop a mountain over 12,000 feet and the expansive world before me was so beautiful that it hurt. Last week I stood before a painting, an aboriginal dreamtime and I was suddenly weeping. It took my breath away. And in the absence of breath it gave me life and dreaming. It made me ache.

Once I was in an airplane that lost most of its power. We limped into the airport. Like my fellow passengers when I was again safely on the ground I had a complete and utter love and appreciation of my life. I ached with the magnificence of it all. I wanted to dance with the joy of being alive.

Each of us will have a moment when we have only a few breaths remaining, a few moments before we shut our eyes and bodies to this life. I imagine those moments will be filled with aching, with the understanding (if it has not come before) of how immense and precious this life is. I will remember holding a hand, blue eyes, mountaintops, umbrella’s in Bali, seawalls, late night pizza and beer, an aria sung just for me.

Long ago I decided not to wait until those last few moments to realize the enormity of it all. I intend to ache everyday with the utter intensity of being alive.

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Truly Powerful People (456)

Posted on June 8, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

456.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I am hiding today. My heart is breaking for no particular reason. Some people call this, “getting up on the wrong side of the bed.” I think they must experience heartache as anger. They skip the heart part and go straight to throwing punches. To let your heart break often requires tears. Pushing back is less vulnerable. Break something else and perhaps the heart will remain intact, or so the theory goes.

I was tempted to blame this heartbreak on the weather: June is having an identity crisis and pretending it is January. I opened my eyes from sleep and heard the cold rain. In the Pacific Northwest there is a unique color grey that shrouds the time of day: 7am could be noon or 5pm. Timelessness. But, in truth, the heartache was with me before I opened my eyes. I felt it as I swam to the surface from my dreaming.

Once in Bali as I swam to the surface from sleep I heard the doves cooing and it was so beautiful that my heart broke. I lay in my bed with the sun streaming through the open screens and knew I was in heaven (it is not some other place). I learned in my Bali time that being fully alive requires a willingness to feel the full range of life’s emotions. To protect myself from heartbreak is akin to cutting red out of the color wheel. Comfort is nice but not very useful if you desire being fully alive.

Recently I saw a powerpoint presentation on what’s coming down the road in technology. One of the slides in education technology said, “Full Body Learning.” When with my aching heart I got up on the side of the bed I always get up on, I thought, “Ah, a day for Full Body Learning. Hello heartbreak.”

Filed under: Body, Love, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: alive, feel, heart, heartbreak | 7 Comments »

Truly Powerful People (400)

Posted on April 13, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

400.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

My morning work plan was trumped by the sound of the Sound. It was one of those rare spring mornings where the air is so still that is seems to magnify the sounds. The tide was in the magic in-between, not out and not quite fully in so the waves lapped the shore, pulling slowly on the rocks and pebbles like a lover’s fingers on your back. The pebbles became a rhythm instrument and I felt as if I was hearing the birth of music. The waves breaking, followed closely by the base drum of water thrumming on seawall, the pebbles long moan with a punctuation, a landing note made by the thump of driftwood butting together. Whoosh, thrum, mooooaaaan, thump (silence) Whooosh, thrum, mooooaaan, thump (silence). The birds joined the beat adding a chorus of notes hovering above the steady rhythm. I was enthralled. I wanted to dance it.

Many years ago I worked with an incredible musician. He spent his life traveling the world learning to play traditional instruments. He was incapable of unplugging from the rhythms around him, the beat was in his body and his body was the beat. We went to dinner when I was first getting to know him. We were sitting in a booth when suddenly he sighed, “ho, yeah,” and began tapping a beat from a source I could not hear. He smiled and told me to listen carefully. In the kitchen, across the room and behind swinging doors was an old refrigerator tapping a tune as it wheezed to keep the food cold. My friend helped me pick up the beat and then he said again, “Listen.” The swinging doors added a perfect compliment. We began running both sounds through our bodies. The ceiling fan began to play and my friend was catching them all in his toe tapping, finger drumming, and mouth popping. For just a moment I was in his world of music. He saw the elation on my face and said, “It’s always there if you have the ears to hear it and a body ready to play.”

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