Live it ...

I'm loving this blog entry Dispossessed poets largely for the line:

"Live your life with such pure ferocity and rollicking panache that people beg you to tell them your secret."

I just love the words, which reflect something of what I aspire to do.  I've always been a bit of a one for a handy mantra.  They inspire and sustain me, but only if they are something genuine to the core of me. It's not about wallpapering, it's about building with bricks, proper solid bricks.

As this one has clear potential to be embraced and embedded into my structure, let's review other past mantras.

One of the earliest I can remember is the "Take no Shit" one.  That's kind of a paraphrase for what it meant to me, but that seems to be the way I operate best.  After all, these are things which speak to me deep down, not something I'm fussed about making sense to the world outside.  This one as I remember was about building my own internal strength, making conscious decisions and carrying them out. It wasn't about treading on other people or shouldering my way through crowds, it was about quietly and internally remembering my direction and remembering that paths should meander in the general way I wanted to go, not be propelled by another force. I was force enough to carry me forward. "Suck it up Princess" kind of fits in with this but that suggests something more along the lines of "Shit Happens".  There are just so many ...

There have been a myriad others.  I  have a mug (gift from a friend) which advises me to "Live Life with Fire and Passion".  The picture on it is me rock climbing, and the words came from my heart.  An existence of drifting doesn't work for me. Well, actually, it does, but it has to be bloody interesting drifting.

I like "in a hundred years we'll all be dead", and "what would a grown up do in this situation?".  The second one is kind of telling, mostly because I suspect that it's the way a fair few adults operate.  I like it because it re-focuses me, makes me think, but I know I can still operate in a childish playful fashion if that's what I choose.

I remember a phase of changing thinking towards a "because he lived not because he died" attitude which gave me a subtle change in approach.  The difference between running away from something and running towards something.  Or indeed "Chasing the Happy Cheese" instead of avoiding the cat.  When I remember, I try to chase the happy cheese, to look towards things rather than spend hideous squishing of head in a vice time figuring out how to get away from uncomfortable things.  Chasing the happy cheese gives you permission to run, to leap, to pirouette in search of the pac man style cartoonesque smiling yellow leerdamer.  Running away is a far more stumbling blind, frantic kind of a thing with dementor style things with wings always lurking.

And there should be background music to these musings.  There's not.