It was a very unintentional conversation to be honest. We were gathering for a marketing meeting, sharing a bit while everyone got there, including myself, and then I got curious about some things being said. Talking about what we would tell our 20 year old self sprouted into words of wisdom that I could not let go of. “What has gotten me the furthest in my life has been being completely delusional.” We laughed! And yet, the power behind that perspective was undeniable. “I didn’t know what I couldn’t do, so I was willing to just try it and see what happened!”
I will be honest, for a moment I was envious of her youth. As a 55 year old woman I don’t often consider myself to have the luxury of “I’ll try it and see what happens.” To be painfully honest, I never did….
I was raised by two very strong German Catholic parents, first generation after the great depression. My parents were born in the 40’s and so went through food rationing for WWII, their parents survived the Great Depression and the dust bowl years. I have multiple times growing up been told “you have no idea how bad it can get,” and I realize the gravity of the truth of that statement. I truly have not known the hardship that my parents and grandparents had to endure. Thank you Spirit! With that said, my parents raised us to be more than a bit afraid of life itself and I took the lesson very seriously. I was married at 23 and worked 4 jobs to put my first husband through school. I was told as a high school senior that I wasn’t smart enough to make it in college, and I was raised to believe that as a girl, I needed to find a good man to take care of me because I would never be able to do it by myself. Sure, did my life prove otherwise on multiple accounts. Yes, and I was scared to death the entire time. I never learned to push the envelope and see what happened. I was raised that I better have a plan A, plan B, and be afraid of everything including the weather (my parents were farmers). I over-achieved at the mindset lessons they taught. Being a single Mom later in life, during a major recession, in a small luxury service business just proved to me that they were right and I had reason to be afraid. Perhaps my parents over prepared me for what could go wrong….
I remember a good friend of mine telling me after he completed medical school that the only way he made it through was because he didn’t KNOW he couldn’t do it. He was blissfully unaware of the fail rates and percentages of people who don’t make it, so his ignorance was his bliss. Years later, he gave up his career and became a flight attendant because he didn’t enjoy the direction that health care was going.
So, it occurs to me now that while I have never been blissfully unaware of anything except marriage and parenthood, that maybe it’s not too late. I have clients and friends who started “hobbies” in retirement that turned into their dream careers, and they made way more money and had way more fun than they ever did in their day jobs. People now do things to make a living that were not even heard of when I was young (hello social media influencers)!
During this conversation I said that my message to my 20 year old self would be that I should push my luck every chance I get. Take chances, say YES to dumb stuff and NO to being SO responsible, live less through my significant others trying to make them successful (trust me I now understand I can’t do that) and more about caring for myself and my own happiness. I would give myself permission to disappoint others instead of myself, I would be a weirdo at a younger age and embrace my hippie granola nature and let it take me anywhere in the world I felt led. I would tell myself I am smart enough to figure things out even when they go wrong (I have had some practice and I realize I am pretty good at it!) and that sometimes things going wrong is when they are actually going the most “right.”
I would do differently because I would BE different.
And here I am now.
In the wisdom of my Soul I recognize these conversations are on purpose. I also know that my Soul had a purpose for me being raised the way that I was. I recognize that even though I am 55, I am not dead nor done, at least not today, so perhaps there are places and ways to be delusional. Maybe there are still ways and times and situations to take on blissful ignorance and forget that I know I can’t do something, or be something, or build something.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s not too late to push my luck.
Maybe there are ways for us all to be a little, or a lot delusional about what is possible for us.
What on earth would you do with some blissful ignorance?
Forever the journey, Anne