The centering thought for today’s 21 day meditation challenge is, ‘Belief renews me every day.’

Most of my life I have been told I am ‘creative’.

I didn’t always take it as a compliment. Sometimes, I thought people were suggesting I was flaky, unfocused, irritating…

I tried to conform.

I took jobs that looked good on paper, sounded good at cocktail parties and made good money. I even went so far as to become a stockbroker, a role I was highly unsuited for but one that I thought would legitimize me in society’s eyes.

I didn’t like it. It didn’t fit me.

It wasn’t that the job wasn’t a good career, it is for many. It’s just for me, it didn’t align with my soul’s calling, my heart’s yearning for creativity in my life.

This morning, as I sank into meditation, repeating the mantra, Sat Chit Ananda (Life is absolute bliss consciousness.) I felt my entire being opening up to the truth of my creative core.

I love being creative. I love expressing myself in creative ways that both challenge and stir my imagination.

I love how words strung together create pictures and feelings that stir the imagination and wake up minds.

How paint dripped on canvas evokes meaning that becomes an expression of joy, wonder, beauty with every stroke of a paintbrush, with every drop of paint thrown upon its surface.

I love the freedom of dance, the joy of spinning in circles, the wonder of creating movements in the spaces around me that stir the air and ripple out in waves of pure, irresistible joy.

I love being creative.

I am grateful.

Once upon a time, I thought being creative was a negative, a less than expression of my lack of meaning in the world.

Today, I know being creative, expressing myself through my creations, is my meaning in the world.

I don’t want to live in black and white. I don’t want to travel the same corridors as anyone else as I desperately try to fit into shoes that do not fit me.

I want to travel my own path, create my own waves. I want to try on life and see what fits and cast off the pieces that don’t sit well within me. I want my journey to inspire others to claim their own path so they too are free to express themselves in their own unique ways.

I want to create a world of wonder and awe where we are all free to express ourselves as creatively as we choose.

There is no right and wrong to creativity. There is only creativity, however we express it.

What joy!

Fitting in
(From Footprints in Melted Snow  — Poems and other thoughts on living well and loving deeply)
©Louise Gallagher (1993)

I don’t always know
that what I do is
right
or that it’s wrong.
What matters is I know
it is my best
so I am free of worry
about how I fit
into the world
around me.

And even though
I like to wear
only the clothes
I know
that
fit me

Sometimes I’ll try
a dress too large
or a shoe too small

And when I do
I take them off
and try
another size.