Choosing to Be Here

I have a confession to make.

When I was a child and was angry with my mother or father for denying me something I thought I should have rights to, I would lash out with words to wound, saying, "I didn't ask to be born!"

Did you also say those words at some point in your life, perhaps when you were a child, or when it all seemed overwhelmingly challenging?

And what is the truth? Did you ask to be born? What do you believe to be the true response to this question?

I believe that we did ask to be born, all of us. I believe that our free will is deeply and consistently honoured in ALL of creation. I believe that our being here in three dimensional reality, held in the weighty hands of Earth's gravitational pull, veiled from the ALL-That-Is by our own soul-self's choosing, is an entirely honourable thing. Something worthy of note, of recognition. Something requiring courage beyond all reckoning. For this has not been an easy thing, this Being in the world. And yet, we did choose it.

How often do you affirm your being in the world, being alive, being in a body that breathes and moves, and aches and sometimes falls short of your expectations.... Have you ever said, out loud, "I choose this! I choose to be alive!"

How often do you love your three dimensional oh-so-physical body? Not the etheric body, the energetic body, the mind, the emotional body.... No, not those. The mind especially tends to receive quite a lot of our positive attention. No, I'm talking about the body. The legs, butt, stomach and chest. The elbows and upper arms. The jawline. The hair on your head. How often do you marvel at all the richness of experience that is yours through your being in a body?

When I was in my early twenties, I almost died one day. Quite the experience.
I was walking cross-country in early December. It was the first really nice hard cold snap. The water was frozen and snow covered the ground. I considered that to be a perfectly acceptable invitation to explore a terrain with which I was unfamiliar. I took a bush-whacker's route from the small dirt road back around to the farm where I was living. I knew I'd have to cross some water to get back, but I thought it was an open area, with maybe 6 inches of water on it - shallow water like that would be frozen solid enough for me to walk on - and a ditch, which I could leap across if need be. It turned out to be a creek - 4 feet deep, twenty feet wide, and covered with a thin layer of ice which deceived me completely.
I was submerged to the top of my chest in icy cold water and the ice kept on breaking under me as I tried to climb out. I was alone and terrified. My lower body was completely numb. Sweat was pouring off of my head and face, making it hard for me to see. My hands were turning blue. My mittens lost under the water. I tried four times to crawl out onto the ice. I fell through each time. I became weaker and more terrified with each passing minute. I looked up at the cold blue sky and knew somehow that there was a complete indifference in it. The sky would not help me. The trees and bushes were too far away. The freezing cold water was pulling me down. I realized very clearly that I was fighting for my life. And for a moment, I contemplated not fighting. I considered how it might just be better, certainly easier, to just go under and end the fear and the pain of seeing my too-small hands blue and frozen on the ice.
But I shook that off. I don't know why I did, but that was the choice I made. I tried one last time to crawl out and this time I moved so slowly and carefully that I could barely maintain it. Yet I had to. I knew, somehow, that this was my last chance.
My legs were completely gone - that is to say, they were so numb that I couldn't tell if they were attached still to my body or not. Only the weight of them on my arms as I pulled myself along let me know that I was whole. I lay flat on the thin ice and moved ever so slowly along its surface for about ten feet. Then, and only then, when I could tell that the ice was thicker, I got onto my knees and moved more quickly. I couldn't feel my knees, but the muscles did obey, did carry me toward the trees and higher ground.
I reached the first tree, the first rock showing through the snow and tried to stand up. I couldn't. Something was blocking me. I tried again. And again in growing panic, still too far from the house and people who could help me. I had made it out of the water. Would I end here unable to go any further?
I looked down to see if I could do something about the block to my standing. To my horror, I saw that what was stopping me from standing was a piece of fallen wood, a branch from a tree, that was jutting into my thigh. My body was so numb that I hadn't even felt it. It didn't break the skin, but bruised the area terribly.
I realized that I wasn't out of danger yet. Hypothermia was setting in. I could barely think straight. And my hands were in danger of severe frost bite. So, I blew on my hands and put them into the only dry part of my clothing, which was the neckline of my jacket. I also moved my legs, forcing the knees to bend and lift. Then I started to walk toward the farmhouse. As my body began to warm from the movement, I was able to break into a strange shuffling run. Needless to say, I made it.
I was stripped and bundled into blankets and the fire was built up to a dangerously high level in the wood stove. Later, I was given a bath in warm, then hot water. By bedtime I was out of danger. I've not stepped out onto ice covered water since that day.

The reason I told you this story is because, frankly, it's a good story. But also because of that moment in the middle of my ordeal, when I realized that it was up to me. My life, its continuance or its ending, was entirely my undertaking. That was a profound realization for me.

Since then, I have been through many episodes of debilitating depression and entertained countless thoughts of suicide and of the ending of this life, this being in a body. I always knew, beyond the depression's hold on me, that I would stay; I wouldn't allow myself to be the cause of suffering for my family. In 1996, my younger brother took his life. That didn't change my feeling about being here. If anything it confirmed it.

We can end our lives. Not doing so is, for me, an act of incredible courage. And I began to notice, more and more, the quiet perseverance and dignity of those of us who suffer and yet, live on, choosing over and over again to say, "Yes," to the experiences that await us. And we all have suffered, each in our own way. We all have met challenges that seemed insurmountable.

But to choose LIFE! To lie in your bed in the morning and say, "Yes! I love it! I love the day and I love the night. I love the hunger and the plate of food before me. I love the pull of my muscles as I climb the hill and the delicious feeling of ease and comfort as I sit in my favourite chair. I love the gains and all of the losses. I love every single aspect and hue and shade and tone of my being here, on this Earth, in a body."

That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about making a conscious choice and then constantly reaffirming it by choosing to say, "Yes!" to Life, to Being, to Body and to All-That-Is.