The Audacity of Being Present

I’ve been reading the blogs and emails of some of the women I spend time with.  I’ve been chatting and listening to the direction their lives have taken since our last time together.  There is a theme emerging and I believe it is greatly important to pay attention to it. 

The theme is this:  the audacity of daring to claim our own lives!  The audacity of declaring who we are, who we choose to become and how we choose to move through our world.  The audacity of thinking that we need not seek permission; need not canvass for approval of the majority; and need not wait until we are hoisted up into our lives by the surge of living of another. 

Audacity.  The audacity of presupposing that negotiation is no longer required.  The audacity of believing… thinking… knowing!… that we not only have the right but simply proceed as if we have already claimed that right to live lives of our own design.  How dare we….. 

Audacity.  The audacity to no longer be who we once were.  The audacity to have moved away from the one everyone else was so comfortable with… the one that was so easy to get along with because we went along with.  The audacity to have changed our mind, changed our way of speaking and changed where we drew the line in the sand. 

Audacity.  The audacity to laugh out loud – even at our own jokes!  The audacity to simply love out loud, when we do; to say what is meaningful, no matter what others think we should be saying given the location, time of day or presence/absence of some ‘authority’.  The audacity to consider that we need not first ask “What are the rules?” but simply proceed in the creation of our own.  The audacity to make it up as we go along. 

Laughing out loud!  Loving out loud!  Being heard and being seen!  Taking without asking.  Declaring without consulting and  negotiating.  ‘Being’ without seeking permission for it to be so.  

How dare we?  I, for one, am up for that! And more and more, I find myself in the amazing company of other women who are daring for themselves.  Smart, funny women.  Courageous and curious women. Women of intelligence in all ways.  Women who love deeply and are choosing to love themselves with equal force.  Women who are unwilling to go quietly into the night and live someone else’s life because someone told them they should.  

I know that I am in the best of company. 

Breathing is good….