I can't sleep, so I'm up watching Elton John interviewed on Inside the Actor's Studio. And I've fallen in love with him all over again. Not that I had ever gotten over him. It's not the man that I love, it's his spirit. The sound of his music reaches a part of me that nothing else does. It started when I was a young teen, obsessed with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, playing all of the songs on the family piano along with him and singing at the top of my lungs. I was alive, and I was in touch with who I was. I even named my only pet dog Reggie after him.
He's wonderful to listen to, his words and his gifts of song between questions, and I'm so glad I've discovered this interview. His music is always on my CD player, and I must own at least 6 of his albums right now, most of them greatest hits compilations which I play full blast while I sing and dance my way around the living room from time to time. I'm tired, I should be sleeping, but instead, I'm awake and alive and loving this time.
But that isn't why I've stopped the interview to come in here and write. Something clicked since this interview started. I've got something that I've never really had before, something I understand that has escaped me before. And right now I get it. I have many talents, many gifts, and I do my best to use and develop them all. But I've lived my whole life with this feeling that there is something else out there, something waiting for me to discover it, something that will turn my life around. It seems to touch nearly every part of my life. With my work, it's the sense that I have been chronically underemployed. I watch performers, like Elton John, and while I don't have a huge musical gift, I have a huge desire to sing and play, and the remnant of the dream to be a concert pianist. There's the dream of writing books. There's the image that I could run a big company, that I belong in the board room and not a cubicle. Even in my personal life, there is a sense that the people around me just really don't get me, that there's a great deal here to offer to someone who just takes a moment to look and see me. There's a sadness that follows me with all of this, a sadness that I've just lived with.
And tonight, what I get is this: I haven't missed anything. My gifts and talents are what they are, and they are here to enrich my life. I do my best to develop and enjoy them. What I get is that they are unfolding as they should. There are no missed opportunities, no wrong decisions, that have lead my life to this mostly-engaged but still feeling a bit disengaged state. I have more depth to explore, more to unfold. I am as I should be. I am who I am. The best is yet to be, and yet, the present moment is pretty spectacular. There is no end to the richness that will roll out before each step I take on this journey.
If I was meant to express a talent like Elton's, it would have been obvious at an early age. The same with the other things. I have spent most of my conscious life pursuing my heart, using my talents and abilities, and living as fully as I know how in each moment. That's all I can expect, and in truth, that is a whole lot of everything! If there was something else for me, it would have been obvious. I've been taking the next obvious step consciously for almost my whole life. I'm not derailed, I'm not off course, I'm not just missing something really wonderful. My life is as it should be.
I still expect wonderful things in the future. I still expect to have a shelf in my bookcase one day of books I've written. I still expect to put my feet in the dust of places like Marrakesh and Tangiers and Paris and London and Rapa Nui and Macchu Picchu. I still want to sail in the warm waters of the Mediterranean, and drive a red convertible with the top down. There is still so much texture that I want to explore in my own life, and experiences that I want to try. I'm refreshed by my life experiences, and I'm hungry for more, more diversity, and more scope. I want to take everything in my life to the next place, to find the next level within myself.
I want to dance every day to Elton John (and others) playing full blast on the stereo, singing with my heart wide open, celebrating the joy of my being.
