The chosen life
I’ve been reflecting for a week now about my trip to Santa Fe for an MEA (Modern Elder Academy) workshop. And then an MEA email came through this weekend with this timely quote:
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
--Marcel Proust
I’ve long held experiences and workshops like MEA’s as potential gamechangers – a place I would go that would transport me, with content and an experience that would transform me. Instead, the week away changed how I think about transformation and put it squarely back in my lap.
So many times we look outside of ourselves for things to change. Words of wisdom that will turn everything around, an experience that will shake our core, a shift that will upend our way of being. And yes, sometimes this happens. But even when it does, it can be disempowering because it’s entirely out of our hands.
My experience at MEA felt entirely IN my hands. And in the hands of my cohort. There are many times in life where we are put in a group and very few of those times (at least for me) has it emerged where the group is fused and connected in such a way that feels unbreakable. And I think it’s entirely up to the group. To CHOOSE to lean in, to CHOOSE connection, to CHOOSE to come back to one another, again and again.
Which is what happened in Santa Fe. The group could have simply chosen to learn alongside one another, to be kind and supportive, and then to simply disperse at the end. But I watched as the group chose, again and again, to lean into one another, to build those precious bonds, to hold each other through the learning and exploration, to come out on the other side together.
And that’s what made it such an extraordinary experience. The choices made consciously, intentionally, consistently, by this remarkable group. It reminded me that my experience of life is what I choose to make it – so if I want something different, it’s a choice for me to make.
Transformation is yours if you choose it and keep choosing it every day. What will you choose today?
