As that old song goes, “The waiting is the hardest part.” I feel that right now. You? I feel it in myself and I feel it in the world. It’s not like I want to get back to the way things were. That’s never made sense to me. But boy am I ready for what I believe things could be. And therein lies the rub.

How do you be with what is here, now? While still standing, waiting, believing, eagerly, openly and excitedly even, in something else? For me that something else always has to do with how we are living as a people. How we are treating ourselves, one another, and the planet. On that level it is both so simple and so straightforward, while at the same time being so complex and so challenging.

If there was one question I could ask when I am no longer here, it would be, Why is it so hard to be who we really are? Why do we fight and avoid our truest nature? Why do we hurt ourselves and one another? Why is it so easy, sought after even, to get sidetracked from what matters most? Sure, I know some would say it is because of our past. Or maybe because that is just how the world is. Some would say it is how we learn. But is this the only way we can learn? If so, we must be really off track to require such extreme lessons to be coming our way.

What would it be like though to change out of love? Out of possibility? Out of the belief that we deserve better? I know it’s possible because these were all of the reasons that allowed me to make such dramatic internal shifts in myself as a young mother. My reasons were not for me, they were for another. But my god did it end up being for me as that orientation grew and stretched me in ways I never could have imagined at the start of it all.

So is that the key? To do it for more than ourselves? What would that even look like? If this was the answer, or at least a part of it, I know for sure doing for others has got nothing to do with following external mandates. It’s not even got to do with whether or not another thinks you are a good person. This can be hard to hear. If doing for others cannot be measured in that way, what’s the criteria then? How will we know when we are in healthy alignment, and when it is that we are following the wrong things?

All I can say about this comes from my experiences as a mother. There was a lot of waiting there. A lot of input with no guarantee. A lot of blind faith. But mostly,  a lot of self–reflection. A lot of being with why it was that I was doing what I was doing that had nothing to do with the specifics of what I was doing. This is what brought me to myself.  And to the understanding of how it is that doing for another brings us back to the Truth of who we are and what we most need. Interesting, how in the end, it is the focus on the other that actually brings us back to our very best Selves.

It is potent and transformational medicine to serve others, to act on behalf of another, to gesture to the world that you care about more than yourself. It is a seriously sacred duty. One that should never be taken lightly. Nor allowed to be misdirected or misguided by the wrong sentiments.For to do so would be the equivalent of allowing children to tell you how you should be in relationship to them to demonstrate your caring. If this were true, it would mean you could never draw a line. Or let them know that what they were wanting or believing was harmful. You could never make a choice, or take an action that they might not understand. But that you did.