A letter to my grandchildren

Dear Cole & Sadie:

The most important message I could ever share with you about life is to always search for and maintain an open connection to your heart. Your heart holds the essence of who you are. It will never lead you down the wrong path. It may not feel that way at first for the right path isn’t always the easiest one, but if you take the time to listen and you listen well to the messages it brings it will gently, or sometimes even not so gently, nudge you in the direction you need to go. Your heart knows. What you have to do is trust the process.

Sounds easy I know, but not always so easy to put into practice once you’re integrated into societies mainstream. And the first thing you know one day you find yourself drifting down the river and you wonder how you got there. You wake up and realize life is floating by while you’re bobbing along like a marionette being pulled this way and that way by the strings of life and not really having or taking time to figure out what it is you want or what it is that feels right for you.

Something, you’re not quite sure what, but something makes you take note of how the days are blending one into another and the pages on the calendar keep flipping over before you have a chance to really see them. But what you do start noticing and seeing is a continuous flow of questions flashing in bright neon lights drifting by your awareness and something tells you, you had better pay attention.

And when you finally do stop long enough to catch your breath and you reach out and grab one of those questions floating by, you find that it quickly leads you back to where this letter began because right there, starring you in the face is the lack of, or a need to connect to your heart and the essence of who you are. And if you stay there long enough it will all come back to you.

You’ll hear it in the sound of the bongo drums you heard at church. The ones you always wanted to play but never gave yourself permission to try. You’ll hear it in the words that keep lining up at the doorway of your consciousness, nudging you, waiting to be written.

You’ll see it in the man you see walking down the street who stops to help the child who just fell off his skate board because your need to help others which you’ve been pushing aside is demanding your attention wanting to find a way to express itself. You’ll see it in the woman who makes a living doing what she loves, creating the paintings and sculptures that speak to your soul and your urge to go home and pull a sketching pad calls out to you.

It’s by allowing yourself time to write, compose, paint, create, and do what you love doing, whether it be through a piece of art or by rearranging your flower bed, that you will connect with your heart and the essence of who you are. And it’s by connecting to the essence of who you are that you will connect to your heart and want to create. Put it all together and it’s called the wheel of life. Jump on and give it a spin. You’ll be the better for it.