To thine own self

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
-Shakespeare

It seems so easy to say "be true to yourself." It's an entirely different thing to actually live it. To be clear enough to listen to the voice in the back of your head, the one that's guiding your highest purpose.

The morning before Kyle proposed (11/05), I had a hunch what he was up to -- only about 99% sure, however, so I didn't ask for details. And I wrote this in a post in my homegrown blog:

"I talked to my dear dear friend last night for 2 hours. We talked about going to weddings and the benefits of leaving our significant others at home for the sake of their own weekend enjoyment--and our own. And we talked about differences and growing apart, about choices and preferences and what we can and cannot live with and with out. We talked about having someone else "get us" (to which she said, "Ali, you are hard to get," which made me feel infinitely better). We talked about asking yourself those hard questions that make you cry because you know the answer but you don't want to live through the outcome, about letting go, about listening to your gut and sorting through the levels of desires to find what it is that is really what you want, about how to find your way back, and about being true, being true, being true, to yourself. "

I had been pondering a metric ton of things, besides my masters thesis proposal, at that point in time. And it made me nervous, almost to the point of nausea.

When Kyle got down on one knee in his snowshoes on that snowy wooded trail by the frozen lake... and showed me the ring I picked out months before, I was in a queasy quandary: Coming from weeks of considering "what the heck am I doing?" and standing with cold toesies facing him, wondering what I was getting myself into or wanting to get out of, all I could muster was a wimpy, half-assed "sure."

I knew then what I know now, but reason was much stronger than feeling. Rationalization trumped the gut.

In a note from the universe emailed to me earlier this spring, the message said:

You can always ask yourself what the "wisest you" would do,
And prepare to be astounded.

Clearly,
The Universe

PS. Just don't answer back out loud, or you may raise a few eyebrows.