1st installment of "No Substitutions"

"NO SUBSTITUTIONS"
The photo above could be your life!

There is nothing to write and everything to write. I'm going to pour my heart out and make no sense. I'll be wise and strong, babbling and incoherent. Out of all this will be ideas that need to be expressed and ideas bound to be seen as nothingness. All-in-all it's an important work because I'm an important person. I am common, unusual, normal and weird. I make up many pieces of us all and have moments to share. I represent more than only myself, more than my gender, my race or my sexuality. I represent the past, the present and the future. I am a person. In the pages ahead you'll glimpse how life can be for a woman, child, sister, friend, lover, teacher, and someday mother. I hope you'll agree-or-disagree, rally against-or-for, many different concepts and arguments in this book. Whatever you do I hope you leave with the most important piece... A better understanding of your own humanness and the realization that we can all connect. "No Substitutions" is about living a life worth repeating, a life you can reflect upon and be proud of. A life where you accepted NO SUBSTITUTIONS for the person you wanted to become.

Have you ever had a day when you looked around you and realized that life was really great in the past, fantastic in the now and scary as hell in the future? Every cell in your body wants to move forward, take the next step, but WOW the past was SOOO great and you're just not ready to leave yet? I have! Have you ever had a day when life was so poor you wanted nothing more than to either reverse to better days past or fast forward in the hopes that the future will be brighter? I have. How can one person have both you might ask. "Easy" I say because when you try desperately to truly live in the now you will often feel the now passionately. So passionately that today can cause both tears of joy and tears of sadness. Living fully, powerfully and observantly often comes with pain both good and bad. A cold foggy morning brings joy at the amazing wonder of mother nature and how the world can look so differently through compressed, water molecule laden air. If one lets their mind wander images can be made up and memories uncovered by things that don't really exist.

All of this, yet I say I live in the moment. I live in the moment, I feel, see and remember all that is around me, but those same things are often felt, seen and remembered differently by each of us. What frames these differences are our pasts and futures. The moments behind us and the hopes we dream of for the future color, shape and texturize our now. So, I live in the moment, but I'm always aware of the rest, aware of it to know how it shapes, colors and texturizes me. How my individuality affects my now and how it makes me alike and different from those around me all at the same time.

To ignore the realities of our yesterdays and the prospects of our tomorrows is to ignore our uniqueness within a group of sames. Same friends, same family, same neighbors and neighborhoods, yet different, unique, and amazing, each one of us. To maintain your life because it's the "way it's always been done" or some equally as easy concept is to NOT live a life of "no substitutions". You have become the substitution, because to walk the same path as others, or I should say, to do so without conscious thought is to live a life that will read like "Mad Libs". The chapters of your life will say "insert name here". So, identify your past and how it shapes you, but don't be lead by it. Be aware of your hopes and goals for the future, but don't let them take away your control and drive you.

There is a middle ground and it's not hard to find, to be, and to experience. Todays' world often gives advice to "life fully", "grab life by the horns", "stop and smell the roses", "be the change you want to see in others" on-and-on I could go with bumper sticker slogans and refrigerator magnet advice. How does any of this really translate into real life? How does this work in the day-to-day existence of the single college student whose basic living is shaped by regulated classes, rule laden assignments, and parent controlled money? How does this work for the working mother of two whose every move feels dictated by business hours, day care schedules, bed-times, bath-times and runny noses? How does this work for anyone who is going through a busy 21st century existence that feels as though even "free time" is scheduled?

This works for those people and for each of us by helping them to realize that every moment, and I do mean EVERY moment, is precious. The choices are small and make the biggest impact. For the scholastically laden student: when rushing between classes do you mindlessly spend those minutes ignoring the trees around you by talking on you cell phone? Do you keep you head down so focused on you own thoughts you don't see the face of the person who just bumped into you or those few moments are you aware of your own heat beat, the people around you; the color of the sky. A moment to only be present and a choice to halt your personal rat race in search of five minutes of peace and beauty. That's all it takes to lead a life of unscripted wonder, a life with "no substitutions" because you choose the ingredients of the personal moments.

For the hectic and busy mother: do you allow the schedules and deadlines to run your existence or do you spare an extra 30 seconds to pass a garden bright with flowers? To give yourself, or the child in the car seat, a smile for the day. Deciding on the minutia of your moments are what defines the recipe for your life. When you let life, society and family or friends determine your all, then your life becomes all about substitutions. Those substitutions always end up feeling and tasting like a salt free- low fat- no trans fat- sugar free- rice cake kind of life.

So...every now and then choose all the fat, whipped cream on top, mocha, chocolate chip moment for your own life!