the question

 

Recently I decided that my wardrobe needed sprucing up, so treated myself to a rare shopping trip to Banana Republic factory outlet store (love Banana Republic, don’t love paying full retail). While there a particular shirt caught my eye that was a little funkier looking than is usually my taste, but I decided to try it on anyway. I couldn’t make up my mind whether I liked it well enough to justify the price, so walked around with it a bit, and then finally returned it to its original spot. As I was walking away, a very stylish young woman breezed by and without hesitation grabbed that very same shirt and immediately proceeded to the check out counter. I think she’d been waiting all along for me to put it down!

Well, now there was no doubt…….I had to have that shirt! I returned to the rack to find there wasn’t another in my size (which is why stylish woman was waiting for me to decide against it), and the desire for the shirt only grew stronger. I flagged down a sales person and asked if the missing size was perhaps in the back. No luck. By this point I must have decided that this was the shirt that was going to change my life because I began frantically paruzing the entire store in hopes that another in my size had simply been misplaced. This is when I looked up high on a wall and spotted what looked to be a small size of “the shirt” being displayed. In my desperate state I asked another associate if he might check to see if in fact it was my size, (which resulted in quite a grumpy expression and several heavy sighs on his part as it required obtaining a ladder and long hooking device). What had gotten into me?

I purchased that shirt and this morning went to try it on again. As I looked in the mirror I had to laugh at myself: I looked goofy wearing it. It just isn’t me. Which brings me to *the question*, and the point of this journal entry.

What do I love?

I don’t want to confuse this question with the more commonly asked “what does everyone else love?”……or “what does my family or church say I should love?”……..or the ever-popular “what will get me loved if I obtain it?”. These are trick questions, designed by a society that wants to keep unconventional and out of the mainstream behavior in check. Follow the majority’s rules and preferences or risk being ridiculed, certain financial ruin, and of course be forever ostracized. Horrors!

But I really believe that the key to coming closer to our true nature……to bliss……is constantly and genuinely asking ourselves what it is that we love. Paying attention to how we feel as we try something out. Does it feel really good and natural? Does even just the wanting of it fill us with excitement and anticipation? Hey, we might be on to something. Go further with it…….now how does it feel? We get ourselves into trouble when we use other people as barometers for measuring preference. I slipped up in the store the other day because I trusted stylish woman’s clothing choices more than my own. There was a reason I had put that shirt back on the rack in the first place, but then I doubted myself, and the shirt suddenly took on legendary clothing status, because I really liked the looks of the woman who picked it up. I forgot in that moment to ask myself the question. “What do I love”?

It’s fun to observe new trends and notice what‘s currently hot, and I think it keeps one youthful to be open to this. But knowing oneself means asking “the question” again and again, and moving in a direction always that is agreeable with our own preferences. Simply purchasing a shirt certainly doesn’t require the soul searching that I am describing here, but I do think that the little things that we do without honoring who we really are send a subtle message to ourselves that the key to joy and peace and acceptance is “out there”, when in fact it is “in here”. The more credence we give to that which really gets our juices flowing, the greater harmony we will feel as we allow ourselves to swirl along with it, and be carried in a direction that is perfect for us.

Okay, I’ve gotta run and return a shirt now. Ü

 

~Cynthia