HappyStarfishes

“The secret to change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new”

~ Socrates

Change is coming in my life.  I can feel it.  It’s powerful and gaining speed.

Sometime early this year, I dreamed that I was in the backyard of my childhood home, sitting on the ground with a chicken walking calmly in front of me.  The chicken was “pregnant” with tons of eggs, so much so that its butt was bulging.  The eggs were emanating a bright light, such that the chicken’s bum was glowing.  Cool chicken.

I laid a tin bowl on the floor, large enough for the chicken to nest and lay its eggs.  Once the chicken sat inside, it released all the eggs in one messy go, along with a ton of clear liquid that filled the bowl.  That chicken really needed to let those eggs out!

I didn’t think much of the liquid and turned my attention away from the chicken for a bit.  When I returned my gaze, the chicken seemed to be drowning in the liquid.  I pulled the chicken up, hoping it wasn’t dead.  It was alive but in bad shape.  While I held the chicken up with one hand, I used the other to drain some of the liquid from the bowl. I realized the liquid was keeping the eggs warm, so I left just enough to cover them. The chicken nestled back in and all was well.

When I woke up, I analyzed the dream and knew what it was pointing to.  For months, I’d been overworking myself, trying to keep up with job demands. I loved what I was doing, so I wasn’t monitoring the stress in my body.  It was taking a toll.  I needed to take a step back to avoid drowning myself in the work.

Like the liquid in the dream, the work and, more important, the environment in which I was working, were providing for the development of my answer to “what do I want to do with my life?”, as well as a greater understanding of my potential.

Fast forward months later, work was no longer so overwhelming, but it was also no longer feeding my soul. I struggled with feelings of frustration, dis-empowerment, and blame.

They did this to me. 

I wanted to feel better.  I knew blame would keep me from feeling better.  I wanted to use the situation to learn how to live unconditionally, to learn how to be happy no matter what was going on around me.

Eventually I did start to find my balance, again, and laughter returned to my work self. Then, I had another egg dream.

I’m back in my childhood backyard. There are eggs everywhere now, all over the place, all over the sides of the house.  I pick one up. it looks ready to hatch.  I squeeze it a little, to see if it will hatch, but nothing happens. I walk away and look at the other eggs. I pick up another egg and hold it in my hands. I watch in amazement as it hatches before me!  Soon all the eggs start hatching. Eggs everywhere!  All hatching!

I look back to the egg I had initially squeezed and realize with sadness that the chick inside is dead. I look back from time to time on that dead chick, wondering if I had caused its death.  A part of me wonders if it was dead before I squeezed it.  My gut tells me it was never meant to hatch. Some eggs just don’t hatch.

I wake up and take heed. OK, dream, I get it.  It’s hard to not focus on “the one that got away”, even when so many other eggs are hatching, but I do my best to shift focus to all those great hatching eggs, instead of continuing to regret and feel guilt over the one that died.

It’s been difficult to do, and I still struggle with it, but I feel myself starting to turn the tide.  As I focus more on building the future, instead of regretting the past, those feelings that “change is coming” are building. It’s starting to build fast.

Something big is brewing, I just don’t know what or when it’ll come.  Last time I felt like this, it signaled the complete turnaround of my work situation (for the better, of course).  The time before that, it signaled the start of a wonderful relationship with a man I can see myself loving and traveling with for the rest of my life.

At this point, change is inevitable. There’s too much momentum behind it.  I want it too much.  I believe in it too much.

For now, I wait, grateful to get to explore the eggs that hatched.