“When you try your best but you don’t succeed, when you get what you want but not what you need, when you feel so tired but you can’t sleep…and the tears come streaming down your face, when you lose something you can’t replace, when you love someone but it goes to waste…Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones. And I will try to fix you.”

I’ve been listening to “Fix You” by Coldplay for the last couple weeks. A Facebook friend posted the video a week after Markus died and I went straight to iTunes and downloaded the song. It seemed to describe my intent to help him see the possibilities life offered him. Was I doing something wrong, trying to “fix” him? Had I failed at “fixing” him? Can we “fix” someboday? Can I “fix” myself?

Last night I sat with yet another friend whose material world is not in sync with his wishes in a big way. He is faced with the possibility of losing his business and his home. We agreed to meet to talk about things he can do to repair. He brought his book to write in and had his pen ready as I sat down. Within a few minutes, the book was closed, the pen placed beside it, and we began talking about what is happening on the inside.

It seems we are faced with an opportunity right now to make deep life alterations rather than plaster over the cracks in the walls. Those changes come from the inside, being the change and allowing it to come into existence. I am an action-oriented being, particularly when things are not right. I want to fix it and I scurry about pulling every ring I can find that looks like the thing that will correct the places that aren’t working. I’ve done this for a long time and keep finding myself in much the same place.

This time it seems I am called to make core changes, step into a new way of being. And without a whole lot of effort that is what is happening. Somewhere way deep in my soul, I made the decision to live this differently. I have to as I can feel the fragile line between life and death. Not that death is something to be avoided, it can’t be. It’s part of life. I’d just like to get in as much of this world as I can before that time. So rather than playing groundhog day one more time I am reaching into what I believe is my life purpose, to offer a flashlight into the dark corners, offer a look into places you might not have known consciously existed or had forgotten about, or discounted as being not practical.

At first glance it doesn’t seem practical to start on the inside when there is so much to do to save the situation. “What do you mean ‘sit in meditation, practice yoga, breathe’ when I’ve gotta make some money?!!” Believe me, I hear that voice loudly and that is the one I am quieting down. We’ve got to quiet the noise in our lives to hear clearly the voice in the back of the room, our own. It’s been in the back of the room, the dark corner because we have given ourselves lowest billing for some crazy reason. The voices we generally think of as our own are primarily the voices of dissent we have named our own.

Those voices came to the forefront to keep us safe and became the loudest voices in a fear-based world. The world we are creating is love-based, so the way we do it has to come from love rather than fear. That takes a bit of retraining ourselves as to what we are listening to and the actions that we take. And it takes us working together. It is much easier to act in love when there is someone to love holding your hand, even easier when there are a few hands to hold.

This is my work. I am retraining myself, living as I have professed to believe, building that muscle, trusting it will be strong enough to sustain me while I create a new world for myself…one in which I am living peace, living love. Consistently.