*Living Intentionally*

I began my transition from a place where once I knew who and what I was, I still felt like I had to wait my turn to be me, wait for life to be perfect for transition, wait for the planets to align so that everything would be easy, fair, and perfect; so that my transition wouldn’t be disruptive to the people in my life, so that maybe I wouldn’t lose the people I Loved, so that life as I knew it, my status quo would go on.

However, I realized a truth on my third bout of cancer. A truth we all know to be true no matter how it applies to each individual; Your turn never comes if you are busy making sure everyone else gets their turn first. Life is never perfect. The planets never do align.

It drove the point home that if the changes in my life were going to happen, it would need to be an intentional thing, a deliberate thing. Henry D. Thoreau actually did come to mind at that realization. And with that conclusion reached, it was a simple matter of reaching up and aligning those planets myself. You cannot make excuses for what has not happened in your life, if you do not make choices that move you forward, towards that goal you seek. And if you are not leading your ideal/ best life, when you do die, there will be regrets and the realization that you did not live to your fullest. Flavors went unsavored, experiences never had, memories never made, Love never had, and Loves never lost.

Who knew that Henry David Thoreau’s Walden quote could encompass so much of my life, but ultimately he spoke a truth we all need to know about ourselves, we should all live deliberately so that when we reach that end, we know we lived, we savored all life had to offer, and we lived life and Loved deeply. We should live life, not the things that are not life. Because living is so dear, we do not fully appreciate our mortality and see it as a challenge being made towards us, a gauntlet thrown down by death, to do all of the things, savor the flavors, make the memories, carve a legacy as a larger-than-life monument to our having existed and lived. Simply said, do not wait. Do not linger on those big decisions, make those difficult decisions. Embrace the choices, value them for what they mean, and value the result of those choices. Accept and appreciate your mortality, and say, “challenge accepted death.”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...”

Walden- Henry David Thoreau