writing for self-discovery

I’ve ignored the upper right quadrant of my Vision Board. It seemed too big. It held a command, and I typically don’t take kindly to commands. Requests – all day every day – but demands? No. 

There it stood, in upper case letters, shouting at me. My eyes avoided looking there and wandered instead through less bossy areas where my autonomy felt respected. 

But, as with everything on those tattle-tale boards, yesterday I knew the time had come. I needed to address the goblin lurking in the corner. I fixed my gaze on the words:

MAKE IT ICONIC

and let them mash around in my brain for a bit.

What did it mean? Make WHAT iconic? The day? My writing? Conversation? And how is iconic defined? I checked out Miriam Webster and the Urban Dictionary and decided that for my purposes, iconic means something outstanding in its category. 

My thoughts immediately came to rest on my house. In the category of hunting shacks, it’s beyond exceptional. I took a look at my three immediate neighbors and the daily interactions we share. How we came together in this remote corner of northern Minnesota and contribute so beneficially to each other’s well-being is nothing short of extraordinary.

And my children, my three daughters, every single one of them, OMG! Iconic!

My travels have been iconic. Friendships with people from every corner of the world. Iconic. 

As my mind wandered back over the years I saw that nothing about me or my path has been anything less than outside the box. Some was iconically tragic. I didn’t do just every day, humdrum dreadful. When I went to the shadow side, I went all the way down. But I recovered and always found a way back to solid ground.

Like the ah-hah when solving a riddle, it landed with a flash. MAKE IT ICONIC wasn’t a directive for the future. It was a commentary on the been there, done that of the past. The energy of the board wanted me to reflect and realize the incredible wealth of experiences that populate my memories.

I’m guessing, with my sun in Capricorn and centuries of marauding Viking ancestors in my DNA, I might struggle to be ordinary. It’s only been since retirement that I completely escaped the chokehold of expectation. Nobody forced it on me. Well… Maybe Mom… “Sit like a lady.” “Don’t hold hands with a boy in public or people will wonder what you do in private!” Okay. Yes. I was held to my mother’s Victorian moral standards and somewhat terrified of disappointing my parents which I managed to do fairly regularly. 

There are things we can control. Other things are part of our genetic programming, giving us a predisposition to tameness or wildness, acceptance or disruption, passivity or aggression, friendliness or reclusiveness, optimism or pessimism, book smarts or street smarts. Some of us have to work harder to be socially acceptable than others.

When we stop working so hard, when what people think no longer holds sway, we become who we are. And when we live our truth, iconic happens.