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The year of YES

(Daring to take flight)

There was a moment at the beginning of this year when my daughter Ruby and I declared that THIS was the year of YES. We wrote those three innocent letters on a sheet of paper and placed it on our mantle.

We made a resolution that we would be bold and try new things, take opportunities, stretch our wings.

Then we cast our intentions to the wind and held our breath wondering what gifts and challenges saying YES would bring.

There is something jostling, awakening, frightening, and delicious about saying YES to one’s Self.

It interrupts our normal way of living so much more than “sure” or “maybe”.

It dares us to participate fully.

We say goodbye to waiting around. Waiting for the right time. Waiting for it to get easy.

Waiting for some kind of certainty.

Saying YES often requires that we act before we feel ready.

We let go of the ropes, the ledges, the safe containers that define and confine us.

We move out beyond the predictability of mundane reality and toss our whole selves into the wilds of possibility.

So uncomfortable!

Saying YES caused us both to do the most terrifying things over and over. It forced us to get brave, to get clear, to get real with ourselves and our illusions. YES ignored our perceived limitations and urged us to forge on anyway.

YES takes courage because we know we cannot stay the same once we say it. YES rearranges all our relations by not allowing us to play small. We abandon the known and enter into the mystery.

YES asks us to speak up. It requires equal parts determination and surrender. We become co-creators, claiming the rites to our own dreams and disappointments. We toss our excuses asunder.

What Ruby and I came to realize was that YES not only takes more discipline, it takes a different kind of honoring. A different kind of trust. It requires that we look beyond the moment we are in. To see past our own judgments of good or bad, of comfortable and uncomfortable. It pulls us out of the inertia and puts us in touch with our resolve. It drags us below the surface of our fears, resistance, annoyance, insistence on proof that things will actually be worth all the work we feel YES takes from us.

Of course NO has its place as well.

Because sometimes saying YES to ourselves involves saying NO to other people. It takes the shape of boundaries that protect our precious resources from being wasted, taken for granted, or disregarded. NO can be YES’s greatest ally. NO can even be a YES in disguise.

NO is practical, it is logical, it is patient.

But NO is tricky too. It walks a fine line.

We have to become wise to it so we can tell when NO is actually in order

or if it is just trying to get us to play it safe.

To remain in our familiar box where all the edges are soft, organized, and well tended.

It wants to reassure us that there will always be other chances.

But if you have ever danced with regret, you know that this simply isn’t true.

NO likes to think that we will be here forever. It loves the words someday, maybe, and later. It is optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. NO makes all kinds of promises that YES would never dare to make.

YES promises nothing but makes us hope for the best. Without hope we would simply give up without trying.

It’s this hope that inspires our greatest desires to peek out from under their secret hiding places.
It asks us to be brighter, to push harder, to shine as though there is nothing else we came here to do. It inspires us to move towards instead of shrinking back.
It conjures our flickering gumption, urges our subtle light. It asks us to take risks.
To Trust.
To take flight.

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