To the Progress-Toward

It's graduation season, parents are out in full force, cameras in hand, students are in dresses and collared shirts, the sun is shining, the tents are up.

Here is a link to a commencement address given by Her Wiseness, Oprah. I like the way she lays it out. Basically, her secrets to living are:

1)Follow your feelings. Check your gut. If it doesn't feel right don't do it.

2)The biggest lessons in life come dressed as detours, obstacles, or full-blown crises. Ask every failture, every crisis, every difficult time: what is this here to teach me?

3)To move forward, you have to give back.

I also liked this advice: When you don't know what to do, get still, get very still, until you do know what to do.

And I also really dug this: "Difficulties come when you don't listen to life's whisper. If you ignore the whisper, sooner or later you'll get a scream."

That pretty much sums up a good half of my troubles of the year 2009.

A year ago I was in a place that didn't feel right, working with people who, contrary to Oprah's advice, did not trust or cherish or treasure me, or vice versa. And I was about to take a job that felt not right at all, (ignored the whisper) and I took it and I was right, it wasn't right, and I got the scream. (It came out my butthole in the form of ulcerative colitis.) It screamed, "Girlfriend, your life ain't right!"

So maybe, just maybe the lesson I can learn is to listen to myself better, and do what I know to do. This year for "graduation" I want to move closer to where I'm supposed to be. I want to get my life right. And I want to be BFFS with Oprah.