My City

I took a stand this week. I am sick of telling people I am from Colorado Springs and having them respond, "Oh, I'm sorry." The Springs is admittedly a dysfunctional town; everything is a battle of blame and distrust. This atmosphere of "It's their fault" is not limited to the Focus on the Family crowd; my more liberal circle of acquaintances is equally guilty. I have been tempted, like so many others, to escape--to move to Denver if not to Canada.

But every time I leave with the intention never to return, I am drawn back under mysterious circumstances. It is as though greater forces are conspiring to keep me here, and I can only assume that they do it with a purpose for me in mind. So here I am. A Colorado Springs native, and this is My City. I take a stand to nudge it into a new vector; it doesn't take much force to change the course of an asteroid, after all.

And so I start with a new job. This is the big one, the one I have been running away from, terrified, for years. I seem to be the only one left who doesn't think I can do it, however, and I have surrounded myself with clear, honest people who know me well, so I choose to trust them and go for it. And I choose to trust my own experience: a risk is most scary when you are standing on the line deciding to jump, but there is no effort to the actual fall. Once I am in mid-stretch, power flows freely through me and breakthrough comes unexpectedly.

The stretch lies in my fixed belief that I have one chief character flaw left to exorcise from my personality: weakness. I have many virtues: honesty, wisdom, intuition, and unconditional love. But fortitude and determination have never been part of my self-perception. Which changes now. It is the last step in this cycle of refinement to establish a connection with my power. It is simply a blind spot to believe that power always looks like a roaring lioness springing from her den. My power comes from my intense, torrential emotion, not from iron will. And perhaps, just a little, from my innate shamelessness.

So here I go. I allow myself two years living abroad (before I become to old), and then I shall settle down in MY CITY and make it work. In the mean time, I shall be lighting fires under peoples asses.