by Jill MacGregor

We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.

~Talmud

There are points in your life when you want things to be different and you feel like you don’t get much say in the matter.

The all consuming desire for that which eludes you…how can you get everything you’re burning for?

Sometimes when you want something, you begin your negations with the Universe—letting it know how you’d like it and when—just so there’s no confusion.

I want:

My list may need some work…

I was having dinner a couple of months ago with a girlfriend I hadn’t seen for years. Caroline is just one of those wonderful people I had an instant connection with and it has lived a long and happy life regardless of how infrequently we see each other.

We were catching up and I concluded my paragraph with, “So, I’ve experienced some disappointments.”

She looked at me, wine glass in hand, and snort laughed at me.

Snort laughed, people!

But.

Oh.

Hey.

And then I got it. I looked at her with a big smile, repeating very seriously, “I have experienced some disappointments.” I batted my eyelashes and tossed my hair for effect.

My turn to snort laugh.

We both laughed—and snorted. Because it was funny what I said. There was a giant chunk of great wonderful perfect events/people glued on the front end of my catching her up on me, but for some reason I allowed my disappointments to be the summary for all the wonderful that had gone on prior.

And since she was standing on her side of the fence looking at my very green grass, she could not help but laugh at me.

And because I was on my side of the fence looking at her lush and lovely green grass; I was positive that she knew what she was talking about.

Alright, snorting about.

Why was I focusing on the things that didn’t go the way I wanted?

Side bar:

In retrospect, the things that I thought were disappointments turned out to be big blessings. I’m so relieved they did not go out the way I had originally hoped. I would have been forced to trade my happiness for struggle, if they had. This would not be the first time (nor last, I imagine) that I have been shown that I didn’t know everything.

You may be making a mental list of your current discord: relationships that are in flux, career at a crossroads, creative process that should produce more, stalled projects, short sheeted on prosperity. You’ve got your yardstick and as you measure every inch of your life, you notice that things are not where they’re supposed to be.

So say you.

Are you feeling dissatisfied?

You may feel like you’d never before had so many important things that are undecided…which may or may not be true, but the feeling is overwhelming. So many things fighting to change, working to change. And regardless of how you push, twist, shove, pound or cram your round pegs they are not going into those square holes.

Damn.

Unclench your fists for a moment. Relax your shoulders—they are far too close to your ears. Take a deep breath. Think of 3 wonderful things in your life—those people that love you, that cool thing you did, all of those answers you had at the right moment.

You could easily come up with more than three, right? You, lucky bastard, you.

Put aside the memories of foot stamping, fist shaking, teeth gritting moments—focusing on that is not going to help you. There is nothing naïve about lining up your site with all of the positive in your life and breathing that in for a change. It doesn’t mean you’re ignoring the problems. It just means you’re filling your tank so that you can make it to the other side.

Picture this:

You’re sitting in a large theatre alone and waiting with breathless anticipation for the curtain to draw back and the performance to begin. Feel the nervous excitement of something big about to begin. Know that you are far more than an observer as you sit and wait for the show to start. All those people who are waiting for their cues backstage–you’ve brought them all together. You put the players in position. This show is finally staged, blocked, choreographed and ready for the world.

Very soon a performance will begin that will take your breath away in ways you couldn’t image.

SRO, baby.

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By Jill MacGregor

I miss eating snow. I do not miss living in a cold, frozen clime—but I do miss taking a mittenful of snow and eating it—without caring if it was dirty. Without thinking of bird poo, bus exhaust, acid rain, blah, blah, blah. It was a wonderful experience to eat snow.

Is knowledge interfering with your sense of wonder or accelerating it? Remember when you were a child? You were still gathering facts on your world and everyday was a mass of new information. And because there were some gaps in the information, magical things like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy could exist easily.

You were told that believing in something was a huge part of making it so. Your belief became the power that kept Santa’s sled airborne. Your belief became an active part of this very special, unexplainable thing.

Now, that’s what I call buy in.

But things can change as we get older. Sometimes our sense of wonder is replaced with pessimism. Sometimes the surprise comes from things actually working out—we lost the assumption that, of course, things would turn out as we wanted. We forgot about the importance of our believing in things and the power behind that belief.

We need to get that back.

Expect more wonderful, please

I’m going to let you in on a little secret—you are entitled to good and wonderful. You don’t even need a reason—you just need to require it.

We live in a world where you get what you give—so by all means, give what you need to complete the action. Are you finding yourself surprised when things in your life turn out to be good—or the far more superlative, gud? Hmmm.

You deserve the good things, you know.

Obvious Miracles

Shake off your dark mantle—you are one lucky bastard, in case you need reminding. Here’s a short list of the everyday miracles in your life.

ONE First and foremost, the biggest miracle in your life is that people love you. And you can feel it when they do. YOU CAN FEEL IT. Let’s face it, there is nothing more miraculous than feeling all the love that people have for you. It makes you strong. It makes you understand that anything is possible.

TWO You have this tiny engine in your soul that’s purpose is to develop solutions that will make your life better—and the lives of others. This little engine of yours is powered by a need for balance and it’s constantly recalibrating and removing the negative and replacing it with the positive. Listen—it’s doing it right now…I bet you weren’t even aware. chug chugga chug

THREE You are constantly growing and healing. You are all about taking lemons and making lemonade—possibly adding a little vodka and just having a party. You are asked to take a sad song and make it better on a regular basis—that’s not always an easy task, but you are up for it. Your capacity for growing and healing is limitless.

FOUR You have so many choices. Choices on how to act in difficult situations, how to treat others, what to say to comfort others, whether to focus on the negative or the positive—the list is endless. What you focus on will multiply, so choose the good stuff.

FIVE Life offers you countless safety nets in the form of friends and family– and even the surprising stranger or two. Life also provides you with endless pieces of luck in the form of happy accidents, parking places that appear from nowhere, the extra $20 in the pocket of your rarely worn jeans, the lost piece of gumption that rises to the surface just when you need it, the call from a loved one that lifts you up…I could go on and on.

You can only receive when your arms are open wide.

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by Jill MacGregor

Praise the bridge that carried you over.

~George Colman

We don’t live in a world of mistakes even though we may feel like we’ve made plenty of them. Each thing we’ve done or left undone, right or wrong, hurtful or helpful—each action has paved the path we’re meant to follow. Each action eventually becomes a new consideration, a different way to look at a commonplace thing so that we can finally see the importance it’s been trying to reveal to us.

And that makes me feel lucky. Doesn’t it make you feel that way too?

Gratitude is on my mind lately, which seems highly appropriate, considering the season. There’s an increasing amount of wonderful that is making up my everyday and it’s constantly grabbing me by the shoulders and giving me a shake. “Look what I did for you today!” it keeps saying. I’m starting to wonder what I’ve done to deserve all of this plenty.

I would like more of this wonderful, please.

Here’s my short list of blessings—wonder if we have any in common?

• All lost things, lost people, lost emotions that have been quietly found — and in even better condition than when I last saw them

• Those who break my fall and clear my path without ever bringing it to my attention

• For the God in everyone

• The kind people who took me aside and told me I was being an ass—and still wanted to be my friend

• For the language of friends and the specific shorthand that goes along with it

• All the things I can’t control and their unique ability to make me better, more agile and stronger

• The compelling need to do things I don’t quite understand

• The sweet way life has of handing me surprises right when I need it

• The highly underused subjunctive—that it were used more often…

• The way it all seems to make sense

• People who get me —you rock and feed my soul on a regular basis—I don’t know how you broke the code

• The ability some people have to change and surprise me just when I’ve given up on them

• The amazing things that come out of kids’ mouths

• For time and its ability to heal all wounds

• Those short term fixes that morph into the save of my life

• The moment I realize just how important someone or something is to me

• For tears that spill without my realizing it

• For silver linings and other miracles that land at my feet

But most importantly, to all my family, friends and loved ones who provide support without being asked, happily call me on my shit on a regular basis and share of themselves freely.

You make me rich.

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You are an epic tale. Full of suspense, full of struggle, full of great passion. I cannot put you down and I feel the sadness and the victories right along with you.

You are a story that I want to keep reading. You make me reconsider and see things differently. I’m curious to see how you’ll surprise me next. I wonder where you’ll lead me.

You are a story that moves me. I feel your pain like a bone that won’t heal. I’m touched by the tenderness and how all the details are there on the page, so available, so honest.

You are a story that is constantly unfolding. Your ending is unwritten and that may be the most exciting part because things are in play. The dice are still rolling.

You and your story. You take my breath away.

by Jill MacGregor

You with all that strength, be a hero.

Fearless enough to forgive, loving enough to understand, courageous enough to create second chances for others—you’re an example to those would rather run at the first sign of trouble. People may not understand your actions because they’re not wrapped in a secret sauce of self protection but every time I see you act with your heart instead of your careful, coupon clipping, organize the drawer nature, I just pick up my pom-poms and shake my ass.

You with all that goodness, be a treasure.

You may feel like what you have to offer is limited or worse yet…you may feel like no one will want all that you have to offer. Fears have held you back and made you stingy without your even realizing it. Hiding your best parts…How could you have forgotten your importance in the world? This is to remind you that we couldn’t do it without YOU.

You with all that love, be a rock.

Your love is a super power that makes everyone stronger. You say the words for others when they can’t. You see the good in others when they feel like they’re only showing you their worst…your ability to look past the surface and focus on the essence always amazes me.

You with all that faith, be a power.

I love how you never give up. Your great understanding that everything is happening just as it should, pain and all, makes others feel better. You say that you’re just doing the best you can but there is so much more shoring you up. You help others remember what they’ve forgotten—trust and hope.

You with all that tenderness, be a reminder.

Your gentleness keeps the boat steady even on the roughest of waters. Your understanding allows people to share their pain and secrets and start to heal. Your actions tell people that its good to be just who they are—that all the imperfections they work so hard to hide actually frost them with a sweet uniqueness that keeps us coming back.

You with all that sorrow, be new.

You have just been given every permission to set it all down before you take another step. And imagine how much lighter that step will be. We’ve missed you.

If you liked this, you may want to read:

by Jill MacGregor

There is a wind that kicks up in me on a regular basis—an enormous dust devil that obscures my view, a tornado that picks up my house but never sets it down gently. Do you feel it? The sharp gnawing in your gut? Oh, yes, its hunger and yes, it’s for nourishment—but not food. That feeling is a little cupcake called gimme, frosted with neediness and topped with tiny, little sprinkles of unnecessary torment.

So much in life is obvious, in fact apparent, and we could see it, if we’d look–if we’d point our focus outside instead of inside. The responsibility is ours to focus in the direction of have, instead of have not. It’s our responsibility to notice beauty even if it’s wrapped in pain. It’s ours to see the opportunity in any seeming hardship or unfairness. The onus is on us to understand what we’ve gained with each loss.

Our focus can fill life with bounty instead of scarcity, with more instead of less. We’re responsible for the give and take, for the steal and borrow, for the need and the desires in each of our lives.

Sometimes, it feels like I sit at an overcrowded table…sit with a giant, hungry family…and on this table, there are a few tiny bowls of stale saltines. We are hon-gray throwing each other a quick side eye, waiting for the grabbing to commence. Like a horrible game of musical chairs, it is obvious before start that someone’s going to get left out. There’s not enough for everyone. Because everything is fixing to run dry—and we all want the same things. We are greedy. We NEED. We WANT. We’ve waited and we’re tired of being patient.

I increase my internal volume until I can finally hear a different voice—a voice that says, there is enough for everyone. There is enough love, success, talent, money, happiness, reward, acclaim, esteem, acknowledgement, all the things that feed us—these things don’t flow from a tiny well that is near depletion—even if our glass never feels quite full. These things flow from a limitless spring that is constantly fed by other sources. Sources that never run dry regardless of how much we claim.

I struggle to remember that there is enough for everyone as I compete with myself to accomplish new goals, as I shuffle around in the dark trying to gather up all of the elusive things that I believe will make me ME. I grit my teeth and furrow my brow as I witness things that I want—no, have earned, deserve—effortlessly fall into the lap of others while I crazily grab at butterflies as they fly up, up , up out of my reach.

If life were a buffet, I would understand the breathless anticipation we feel as we wait for our turn in line to RECEIVE—so fearful that the person in front of us is going to get the last delicious morsel that we have been waiting so long and so patiently for.

Goodness is not finite.

Someone is not going to take the last chunk of love or success or plenty or happiness that you’ve been longing for—all the things you’ve desired, worked for and felt you deserved—because there is enough for everyone.

No one’s going to take the love that is yours—it’s just waiting for you to claim it.

No one’s going to rob you of the success you’ve worked for—you can make it yours without elbowing and cutting to the front of the line.

No one’s going to pilfer the thing you’ve been working hard to acquire, the thing you’ve been searching the horizon to so hard to see, the thing you’ve worked to open yourself up to experience—when you are ready (and unfortunately you are not always the person who gets to decide that) it will all come to you.

It’s all about perspective. Point yourself toward the have, not the have not.

By Jill MacGregor

My mom once told me “Don’t pray for patience because you’ll be shown how to be patient in ways you never wanted to imagine.”

I try to never assume. Sometimes saying a prayer fills me with the same feeling I get before I assemble a wall unit from IKEA. My instructions will be in pictures not words, with symbols I may not understand and 9 times out of 10—I’m going to have to get my drill out and make the hole on the other side of where it currently resides. I usually find out that I’ve done something upside down, post hole drilling, of course.

I have been known to misinterpret.

I unfortunately have come to think of God as a bit of a trickster (perhaps even Scandinavian…see: GØD), possibly a lawyer (sorry, lawyer friends), always looking for the loophole—Sometimes looking for the exquisite pain that could accompany the answer to a prayer because I left out something obvious and critical. From a very early age I felt if I did not specify every particular of my prayer that God might dupe me on a technicality.

It would have been my own fault for not having being specific.

Because of that, I have a tendency to make each prayer sound a bit like a deli order. Since I want my sandwich the way I want it and so there are no misunderstandings I have a tendency to list all the withs and withouts in extreme detail. It may sound something like this:

“Dear God. I would like to meet Mr. Right. And not the Mr. Right who starts out like Mr. Right only to turn into Mr. Wrong by the end of the movie. I would like to meet someone who loves me. I would like to meet a man who loves me.” And because I may be called later on being vague, I add,” And he’s not married. Or gay. Or dead. Or in prison.” And because I may only have myself to blame, I add, “I would like to love him back.”

And because sometimes God only gives me half an ear due to multi-tasking, I add: “And I would like him to be my height or taller because we’ve already tried the shorter thing and no one’s really happy. And no toupee. I can do bald. Bald’s ok, but no comb over. And I’d like him to have a job that makes as much as me or more because we know how weird it gets when he finds out I make more than he does. Not everyone is a carpenter. Ha. (awkward pause) It’s ok if he is a carpenter. As long as his hands are clean.”

I reflect. I wonder, if I were God, how could I screw me?

Countless times, I’ve made God the bad genie who just granted me three wishes only to catch me in my greediness and deliver the pure and unadulterated crap I accidentally wished for in my haste.

I pause and try to find some way that God might misrepresent my wishes, because I realize that if he only followed my instructions to the letter, everything would be perfect.

And I got to tell you…between you and I, God might be coasting on thin ice. Sure, I’ve experienced the joy of unanswered prayers. Somebody got busy and didn’t clear the list of to-do’s that day and it just happened to work out in my favor anyhow.

I’m sure I offered up a begrudging *thank you* in response…since the situation didn’t follow my specifications.

If only God would listen…

Poor God. Reading whatever he wishes into my prayers, right or wrong.

Poor God. Not understanding what needs to happen to make me happy. I’m here telling him, if only he’d pay attention. I am detailed for a reason.

Poor God. I don’t know what else I can do to help him. (tired smile)

Poor God. If only he were as smart as me.

By Jill MacGregor

When I walk outside, dinosaurs don’t chase me. I don’t see danger at every turn. My fight or flight response rarely if ever has good cause to kick in.

Except when I am saving everyone’s life in my head. I do it a lot.

You’re welcome. Just doing my job.

What could I possibly be talking about? It’s like this. In my head, on a very regular basis, I have smack down every home invader, scare the shit out of every mugger and protected myself and everyone I love from danger.

It’s sort of a volunteer position.

Until recently, I thought it was one of those things we all did—like talking to yourself or replaying the day’s events until they played more favorabley.

Is this wasted energy or preparation? Only time will tell because I do inadvertently store all my scenarios away. Not for review but for just in case. Card catalog of defensive maneuvers and crushing comebacks… complete with bat shit crazy facial expressions and gestures so every fictional attacker understands that I have nothing to lose, I’ve been waiting for trouble…for the myriad of dangerous situations in which I find myself…alright, ,in my head.

I am not a negative person. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I am an optimist which makes me feel like Pollyanna, bonnet tied under my chin, understanding that my fall from the tree will bring the town together.

But, honestly, we live in a world full of miracles. Children unburied in Haiti. Peace when everything points to potential chaos. Saying yes instead of saying no.

We created this phrase: near miss. It describes all the good things that rationally shouldn’t have happened but did.

Maybe that’s just our version of a miracle.

In fact, we’ve created an entire lexicon all so we don’t have to say miracles. I think it might embarrass us or feel too Old Testament…

Narrow escape. Incredulous. Unexpected. Lucky Duck. To be in awe of. And then, out of nowhere. When I least expected it.

All miracles.

Love. Friendship. Forgiveness. Cured (always past tense). Belief.

All of those positive things that happen in a way we can’t quite explain…miracles. Doesn’t always have to involve Olympic hockey or rising from the dead to be miraculous.

I could leave my crime fighting behind me. The world may not need me to take care of it after all.

`

By Jill MacGregor

I started this blog just a few months ago on September 11th, as a birthday present to myself. I didn’t know exactly what to expect as I began. It’s been a thrill for me.

Tracks in the snow. You. You there. I know you’re out there…quietly tiptoeing around in the dark and leaving behind your analytics. I see the trail you leave. I so love to hear your shouts from the etherworld. Overwhelming me with your opinions, hopes, rants.

I want to thank you for reading. I don’t think I can tell you how much it means to me that you take time out of your day to do so.

That little thing you do is so meaningful to me.

Thank you.

My personal goal was to hit 2,500 unique visitors this year and I hit 2,501.

Thank you again.

Here are your favorite posts in order. You picked all my favorites. Hope you enjoy.

Since I am embracing “don’t ask, don’t get” this year in a brand new way, I’d like to ask two more things of you. If you haven’t subscribed, it would mean a lot to me if you would. And if there’s a post that speaks to you, please share it with a friend.

Thanks in advance.

Your Faves From 2009

Your 2010 is going to kick it.