Hobnobbing and the word "could"

There is something seductive about living in the realm of possibility.

Thanks to an electrical fire downtown that evacuated the Historic Back Bay part of downtown on Tuesday night and then caused power outages in the area until late Friday, I only had 2 1/2 days of work this week.  Then over the weekend, I worked all night Friday and most of Saturday at the Art and Design of the 20th/21st Century show at the Boston Center for the Arts.  The college I work for was a big sponsor of the show and in return, they host our benefit gala.  So I put on my black party dress and spent a few hours listening to classical music and sitting amongst very expensive art.  Most of my evening and day were spent alone, however there was the occasional person who stopped to ask if they had met me at the AIDs benefit, or the Children's Literacy dinner, or the Save the World Masquerade, or one of the myriad of other events that people use to throw money to charities.  After assuring them that we had not met and explaining that I was representing the college, they would sort of wander away.  When walking through the show, I had a $16,000 dollar tennis bracelet put on me.  I felt like any minute a photographer from a society magazine was going to drop in.  I can't even explain how relieved I was when my boss showed up on Saturday and I got to leave.  When you don't have it, money can become a very uncomfortable thing to be around!

Anyways...between my unexpected days off of work, and my time spent alone working the show, I had a lot of time to think this week.  Sparing you all the details, if I could plan out and have everything in my life happen the way that I wanted it to, there are a few things that would be going differently for me right now.  I started to think about what it is that we have control over in our futures.   We all make choices that lead us ultimately to who we become.  Buddha said "Work out your own salvation diligently."  In the Bible, Paul states in Philippians 2:12, "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."  While I believe it is ultimately through the Savior, Jesus Christ, that we are able to become clean from our past mis-steps and our sins, we have control over the lives that we choose to lead, and the person our choices make us into.



I know who I want to become.  I have a very clear image of the life that I desire to have.  In order to get there though, there are risks that need to be taken.  Risks that are uncomfortable to take.  There is one giant thing looming in the back of my mind that has curtailed a lot of this "positive motion" risk taking in the past.  It is not fear of failure.  I am an expert at falling on my face and picking myself back up again.   It is the loss of possibility that scares me.



There is something very seductive about living in the realm of possibility.  Right now I can create in my mind ways for all the unknowns in my life to end well.  I could get this job, I could get this part in a play, I could date this person, this person could accept my heartfelt invitation to learn more about my faith and how it could make them happy.  Living with all these coulds in my life has given me a false sense of happiness.  How much greater would my life be if I just took out that pesky little word.  The problem is that when you take a risk and you do fail, its not just the skinned knee or the bruised ego you come up with, you find that when you pick yourself back up, that little could has skipped town and it has stolen away the rest of that particular dream that had been giving you at least a little happiness.  And that is why I feel like living this way can be addictive.

I wrote in my notebook "you can't know the end from the beginning" when I moved to Boston.  Now it is just time to accept that notion and take a few educated risks.

Oh...and if you happen to have an extra 16 grand you don't know what to do with....that bracelet looked pretty good on me.  Just saying.