have you hugged a flying monkey today?

To open your heart like a Buddha,  we must embrace the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows.

~ Jack Kornfield, Buddha’s Little Instruction Book

(there is no picking and choosing  . . .)

I should be committed

“The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.”

~ Rollo May, 20th Century Existential Psychologist

Kind of appropriate during election week huh? Like any other time wouldn’t be appropriate.
Oh well, I’m glad my “SELF” does not need to choose like my “self” does.  That’s grounding for me.  Because while some days I have much courage – and actually choose with a balanced head and heart, other days I’m just, “king of the forest” making some really shitty choices out of a fearful ego. 
Thank god there’s always another chance at relationship with others – with myself.  A chance to have the curtain pulled back, to wrestle with flying monkeys, to get a smack on the nose (ok, enough of the damn Oz references).  The bottom line is that I don’t always choose with courage – but I always get another chance to choose and that’s the fuck’n beauty of life!  To learn to be fully human.
And then to learn to move beyond this and to -
let it go . . .
Resting in the “SELF”