What exactly does it mean to live radically? In the 80s, the term “radical” had a connotation of awesomeness. If I were to take the definition from there, it would be pretty simple, or would it?
Each person has their own definition of awesomeness. And because of that, each person has their own definition of what it would look like to live life radically.
I’m actually not here to define what your life should look like. Looking to someone else to offer you that picture is doing yourself a huge disservice. We are each, at our core, divinity. We are here co-creating with God and all of the other people here on earth. We are here to create a human experience. It is through this experience that we are able to enjoy the human emotions of joy, sadness, pain, peace, and anything else that comes with being alive in these bodies.
Each of us, being a part of divinity, allows God to experience life through our lens. I once had a conversation with one of my sons where he expressed a bit of an existential depression. He grew up in a faith where we were striving to become God, to be exalted and to live in paradise forever. This brilliant young man, who was then 17 years old expressed his concern that if we were to be exalted and to be in paradise forever, even if we had the ability to have and do whatever we want, in eternity, infinity would pretty much cancel itself out and it would be tedium for eternity and, well, essentially hell. If all we ever felt was good, what would be the point of that? Too much of a good thing, to him, was not the idea of paradise, but the epitome of hell.
This got me thinking. I grew up in that same religion, and I was devout. I had a testimony that was so strong. I stood up for what I believed in. When I lost a daughter at 4 days old, 6 years ago, it was that faith and the hope of an eternal family that kept me holding on. I judged people and hurt for them when they made “bad” choices, because it broke my heart that they would be lost for eternity…
Then, about 5 years ago, my husband of 20 years started to experience a change in his reality. There has been no official diagnosis, but let’s just say that he is so far out of the box that sometimes I think he might as well be on Mars. The things he started to present to me started rocking me to my core. I knew that he was speaking some truths, but the frame in which he put them were directly contradictory to the truths that I had grown up with.
I try to have an open mind, and my various trainings had taught me enough that I knew that in order to be able to communicate with him, I would need to at least acknowledge his point of view. Putting on his lens, I started to and re-examine experiences from my past. I started acknowledging times when I “knew” things. Many times in my life, I knew things ahead of time, with such clarity of detail that it would be scary.
I knew things about people. I could be talking to someone who had lost a loved one and all of a sudden, I would start telling them things that they needed to hear from that loved one. I don’t know that I would describe it as a TV show “Medium” thing, but it was definitely legitimately there.
I could connect with people on an energetic level. I could facilitate healings and I could channel divine messages that once it was over, were completely gone because it wasn’t me giving the message.
As I started getting clear about my talents, my place and my desires, I started to see that although there were many truths that lived within the walls of that religion, there were also several things that I had struggled with all my life. That conversation is for another day. As I searched, pondered, and prayed, it was revealed to me that I was here, in this place, with all of my experiences, for a reason; that it was time for me to move on; that the journey I was on at this moment was taking me down another path. The path of living life radically.
I am not an expert at any of this. The information is evolving and the more I play and pay attention, the more I learn, the more nuanced everything is. I have learned that life is perfect. I am perfectly imperfect. Happiness comes from recognizing the perfection.
I have learned that it is possible to be happy, even if you don’t have stuff. It is possible to be happy, even if you aren’t in the “perfect” relationship. It is possible to be happy, even if you’re broke. Happiness is a state that is only dependent on one thing. The person experiencing it.
Living Life Radically is the framework that I am developing which has allowed me to recognize the perfection; embrace it, warts and all; and to be finally happy.
Join me on this journey. Learn who you are. Love yourself. Be happy. Live life radically.