This essay was originally published August 2021, edited for today just a tad.
I’m off track. Again.
It might look like I have it together, but I don’t.
Like everyone, I’m frustrated that COVID is rearing back up.
I’m frustrated that it’s not easy to sit with you, offer divinations, or invite you to Darkwood for a class.
Plus, I’m spending this Warrior season in The Barracks.
So, it’s tempting to think that COVID + Barracks + being off track means I get to sit on the couch and binge How I Met Your Mother and just give up.
But then, I remember Vidal Sassoon.
Say what?
Oh yeah, you know who I mean. If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.
That guy.
I watched a documentary about his life years ago.
He said something in it that changed my life.
An interviewer asked him why he took such great care of himself.
How did he muster the discipline day after day to be so healthy?
To paraphrase, he answered “I live a life so intensely impactful and wonderful that I need to work to survive it”.
Get. Outtahere.
That’s so badass.
Yes! say I from the couch, on my third episode in a row of How I Met Your Mother.
Oh. Riiiiiiight. I say from the couch.
I have forgotten my Warrior Why again.
Again!!
But that’s the beauty of following the Wheel of the Year.
Lessons come back around, reminding us again and again, teaching us until we finally get it (and that’s called wisdom).
Warrior season reminds us what our mission is, our “why”.
Why it’s important to stay so healthy.
Why to stay strong, in fighting shape as they say.
Why to get off the couch and out of our comfort zones, even though success is never guaranteed.
(The couch can be literal, but also symbolic of any way that we’re being lazy with our hearts, our bodies, our brains, or our spirits)
The Warrior archetype helps us get crystal clear about the incentive for getting off that couch.
The incentive is this: if you can’t survive the intensity of your life, you will not have the impact, leave the legacy, or create the change that you were born to make.
Said another way, if your life is not intense enough to require survival in the form of devoted self-care, you’re off track.
You’ve lost sight of your Warrior Why.
You’re distracted from the mission.
But so what? What’s so great about your mission anyway?
Especially because the couch is pretty awesome; so safe and easy.
But it’s not as awesome as your impact.
Not as important as your contribution, your participation, your engagement.
Not as awesome as your hard won, full-out presence.
So, check in.
What would the world be like without you?
What would we miss out on if you didn’t offer your incredible gifts, your art, your love, your perspective, your wisdom?
What will we miss if you aren’t up for surviving the delivery of it?
I know the answer.
We will miss evolving, transforming, and healing because of your contribution.
We will miss the clarity and inspiration that your work/presence offers us.
So, get in fighting shape.
Say yes to a life of such wonder and impact that it requires survival.
Get good and clear what’s at stake if you don’t.
This is your Warrior Why. Know it, commit to it.
Take your life seriously.
‘Tis the season.
love and tending the why,
xo
kv
