Monkey Mind

The Buddhists call it "Monkey Mind" -- that naggling voice that terrorizes you when you decide to follow your heart's desires. Are you nuts? it says. You can't do that. You have to be practical. What are you going to do for money? How are you going to live? Why are you doing this? You can't do this. Well, in the Unity Church we say to Monkey Mind, "Thank you for sharing but I'm going to do this anyway." So, I say to my personal Monkey Mind -- who is screaming bloody murder right now as I drop out of USF and grad school in the Library & Information Science department and go in search of an MFA program in Creative Writing (which I wanted to do in the first place) -- "Thank you for sharing but I'm going to do this anyway."

I have a magnet on my refrigerator that quotes Henry David Thoreau: Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. Pretty words. I've read them over and over again while I was lolligagging in the kitchen and thought if only that was possible. Well, sometimes it takes cancer to kick someone in the butt, to get them moving in the direction of their dreams. I've been kicked.

This is the gift brought to me by my cancer.