Thursday, January 16, 2014

Brilliant Dash

 It’s not the day we are born. It’s not the day we are finally laid to rest. Neither of those days are THE most important day of our lives. It isn’t the day we graduate from college, or the day we land the big job, or the day we get married, or have our children. There is no single most important day of our lives. It is ALL the days we live an Astonishing Brilliance in the dash between birth and death.

Have you ever had a day that was an astonishing brilliance? You know where the magic of the world woke up to you: A day when the colors were brighter, the tastes richer, the scents more intoxicating. Something got you there. Something got you to pay attention to the astonishing brilliance of the day. And then that paying attention moved you so that you started to shimmer in your own way: You became more brilliant as well.

What was it that got you there? Was it an experience? A taste? A someone? What was it that finally calmed the storm between your ears and let you connect with something deeper?

If the astonishing brilliance of our dash is THE thing that matters then the more shimmering moments we have the more brilliant our brief time here becomes.

This became abundantly clear to me today. Today is the day my mother died. And although I grieved her loss in the morning, by the afternoon I was remembering the light of her dash: The dash where she was strong, and funny, and loving. The dash that made me want to fill my life with more astonishing brilliance so at the end I can relish in the light that was my dash.

Sometimes it takes losing something for us to wake up to brilliance, sometimes it takes finding something so bright it dazzles us to wake up to brilliance, and sometimes it just takes quieting down and listening to yourself to wake up to brilliance.

So here’s my question: “What would it take for you to have a more brilliant dash?” What would you have to lose (nothing I hope)? What could you have to find? How could you wake up and craft a more brilliant dash? A dash filled with astonishing memories that are so indelibly burned into you that you can’t help but feel grateful for the chance to explore your shimmer. Find some thing, some place, some one that makes you shimmer and you’ll be astonished at your own brilliant dash.

See you on the wire

-- Steven Cardinale

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