Monday Moment - Choices Trump Limits

Yesterday Ray and I went sailing and this morning I went for a kayak paddle. Life is so good! It's a beautiful time of year in a beautiful place.

This morning it occurred to me that this year - more than any other before - I have really claimed my place here in the Finger Lakes. Life is good!

And yet, my morning's appreciation was tinged with just a little regret. I have lived in this beautiful part of the world for nearly 30 years - and just now am feeling 'that Finger Lakes feeling'? What's that about?

Clearly for me, being on the water has had an enormous role in making me feel gloriously and thrillingly at home here in a way I never have before. I've really taken advantage of living near a lake this year - way more than any other summer up till now. And I started wondering just why it took me so long - when I clearly enjoy my time on the water so very much.

What I realized is that for many of the 29 years I've lived here, I got into the habit of thinking that other people had opportunities to sail or kayak or live on the water. Other people were born here. Their families bought lakefront property before it was outrageously priced, and therefore they naturally learned to sail and boat and do things that a person from landlocked Illinois hadn't learned. Other people had more time to really enjoy summer than a person who managed a children's camp as I did the first 12 years I lived here. Other people made a lot more money than I did - or do or ever will. Other people had family, partners, or friends who'd support them in trying out new water sports than I happened to have. Somehow a lot of the joys and privileges of Finger Lakes living was reserved for other people instead of for me.

Except of course that other people never stopped me from fully enjoying water sports. Nope. The one person that stopped me was me!

Now I wouldn't want to give the impression that I never found ways to enjoy our lake till this year. I swam and went to our public beaches often. I took sailboarding lessons, I've rented boats and taken numerous boat tours. I've been out on boats with friends. I even remember sitting on a beach on a gorgeous day and saying to my companion, "It just doesn't get any better than this!"

But I'm thrilled to say that it does! And it has!

From the perspective of hind sight, I feel now that until this year I acted a bit more like a tourist on our lake than a person who lives here! And the difference? It's all been about the choices I made this year - to paddle my kayak a lot more than ever before and to sail.

And here's the kick in the teeth. Neither of those choices was out of my reach - not really - in any of the 29 years I've lived here!

Oh it's undeniably easier now. There are still a lot of other people with more money than I - but I have a lot more now than I used to have. I have a partner who shares my love of the water and who has skills that I don't have and which really help get us out there. I can arrange my own schedule now in ways that were not always my perogative.

But all those things only make my choices easier - not possible. What makes the choices possible is me - my determination to get as much life from life as I can, my self-discipline that pushes me to follow through on wishes and desires, and the emerging refusal to believe in self-deluding limits that I have imposed upon myself!

I'd like to say I'm done with self-imposed limits in every arena of my life, but I have learned just how pervasive and insidiously convincing limits in my head can be. What I do say - as of this very instant - I am a person who strives to examine every limit she puts upon herself and to blast away those that might prevent me from enjoying anything at all that I might think other people are only allowed to enjoy. This I solemly pledge!