I ❤️🗽🚕

 Culture blah blah blah.... Restaurants blah blah blah... Theater blah blah blah... Nope, this ain’t that kind of I ️love New York post.

New York is representing something very specific at this stage in my life. It represents possibility. I’m always reading about many facets of the human condition, from the psychological to the spiritual and whatever I can find in between. Whatever the school of thought, there is constant mention about how people shrink themselves by locking their lives into these sad, tiny containers that can only hold so much. We build set perimeters around our existences and foolishly label them lives. There is almost no end to what human beings can accomplish. If someone can twist their body into a crazy yoga pose, so can you. If someone can scale a mountain, so can you. You might not want to, I sure as hell don’t, but you mostly likely posses the ability. We are created with these untapped, vast capabilities we often never discover by designing these incredibly lacking 3D human experiences. Think about it; at any given moment we could be whining about the same dumb thing we were five years ago, while there’s a doctor volunteering in some godforsaken country. Or an impoverished child sharing her food with another hungry youth. We have an endless stream of choices that shapes our days. I have a friend who has literally been complaining about the same topic for 17 years. Nothing has changed. Things don’t change unless we change first.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what New York symbolizes regarding divorce. We live near the greatest city in the world. No other place has burst forth with as much passion, innovation, creativity, music, fashion, craziness, and variety. Anything and everything can and does happen here. This is true of being divorced as well; it’s a major opportunity to completely change course. Anything that did not serve you in your last chapter can be reworked. Refreshed. Rejuvenated. In this sense it’s a gift. As I’m meeting more divorced people, men and women, it strikes me how even though all these people claim to have gotten divorced because their former situation wasn’t working for them, half of them lapse into the same unconscious choices they made before. The chance at greatness is being squandered by the lure of familiarity disguised as safety. They broke free and started to run, only to give up before they hit their stride. I shouldn’t care but I do (I guess I shouldn’t care about a lot of things but I can’t help it). It’s so frustrating. I’m thinking , “I know you want better so go get it!!” What it boils down to is an utter lack of self awareness and vision. It takes time to learn the new you and unlearn the old. Lots of time and introspection. Patience. Kindness. Self love. Just because you made the step to get divorced, it doesn’t mean you have a new life. You only have a new life if you work your ass off to create one. Signing a piece of paper doesn’t guarantee you a brand new start. Not if you’re going to stop yourself before you had a chance to believe that you can have what you claim to want. The spiritual teachers warn us not to shrink the magnificent essence of what it means to be alive with stupid bullshit. If we remain truly tapped into the splendor of loving awareness that we are at all times, we don’t get bent out of shape about most 3D concerns. Traffic becomes irrelevant. The friend who slighted you doesn’t become a topic of conversation. Your need to be right evaporates. If we are conscious and aware then we make choices that better jive with that belief. If we think we are small we keep playing small, case closed. Who we date, what we eat, who our friends are, what we read, how we spend our free time. All of it is a direct reflection of what we believe we are. Belief that you’re a limited person will keep you stuck in that stale storyline. A Tony Robbins type of motivational speaker will deliver a similar message. So will a Mark Groves kind of therapist. The common denominator is that WE MUST STOP PLAYING SMALL. IT IS HALF A LIFE. YOU ARE WAAAAAYYYYY MORE THAN THAT SO DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO UNDERSTAND THAT. Why do people become so moved staring at the vastness of the ocean, a field of wildflowers, or a clear, starry night sky? Because it reminds us of possibility. Greatness. Openness. Depths we cannot see. Distances we think we will never travel. Why is the heart connected to the element of air? Because our capacity to love has zero bounds. None. No limits. Our bodies are finite so it’s hard to comprehend that what’s inside it is without shape. I get that; it sounds so unfamiliar to those of us used to everything being in set formation. Schedules, thoughts, meals, words, songs, everything seems to have a beginning and an end. True, that all does. But we don’t, which is why we’re so superior and so blessed. It hit me yesterday why right now I’m having such a love affair with this city, in addition to the obvious cool factor. It’s not that. I don’t care about trends or any of that nonsense. It’s because New York represents freedom of spirit. And life without that is a form of death. Living here and not taking advantage of all this place offers equates not living life to the fullest within your heart. What a shame; to be so fortunate to have this incredible opportunity and let it float away because you were too small to want bigger. Wanting gets you nothing but unfulfilled dreams. Dreams, People!!! Dreams are so major, they exist to become reality. We want that, right? Stop wanting and start backing up your own claims by creating for yourself. Don’t stop until you go to bed smiling every night. I’m not talking about easy. I’m talking about big. Once you tap into the enormity of who you are the difficulties of life have such less power over you. You can get divorced ten times and make the same shrinking moves each time, landing you not much further than where you began. There are times for baby steps and times for leaps. But if you never leap you’ll never live in accordance with your inherent design, which is sheer splendor , power, and magnitude. What a waste of a pre war rent controlled apartment.