denise aday...

Cat Patrol

Cat people can relate to my morning ritual of cleaning the kitchen counters before use. When the floor’s gotten a bit dusty, telltale paw prints show the way. The cats stop the occasional mouse, but who’s to stop the cats?!

The dynamic duo at rest. They release all this stored solar energy at night ;)

Once activated:

Let Awesome & Amazing Take Care of Itself

I don’t think I’ve ever felt the need to be Awesome or Amazing, in the way we’re constantly told we’re supposed to — especially women. (If we’re special enough can we then be equal?? But that’s a related issue.) Seriously, think about it. It’s the internal version of “keeping up with the Joneses,” all this striving to stand out (read: above) and to be so grand and wonderful. It’s exceptionalism right down at the individual level and is part of what’s seriously wrong with our American culture, in particular. I think it contributes to the societal psychosis playing out in such horrors as mass shootings and stabbings.

This world would be a much better, healthier, “safer” place if people would JUST STOP trying to be so damned impressive (to whom exactly??) all the time and focus on simply being regular good people, helping others, doing the right thing, and feeling satisfied, fulfilled, and happy ENOUGH. Awesome and amazing will take care of itself.

Sometimes the simplest, smallest things are amazing help to others, as a mini project with a new client highlighted for me last week. I wasn’t trying to impress — it wasn’t about me, after all — just help someone get something up and running properly. She thought it/I was awesome and said so with much enthusiasm. We were both happy at the outcome… and amazing took care of itself.

So let’s drop the pretense and stop buying into all the hype that literally sickens us with stress and worry about whether we’re being all that WE can be while others suffer all around us just trying to get by. Deep in my heart I know that this unhealthy obsession with our comparative self worth is part of the GREED that KILLS.

Let’s slow the heck down, take some deep breaths, “drop the story line” as Pema Chödrön would say, and reflect on what it’s all for — what’s really important — at the end of the day.

We are stardust, after all.