A Fresh Start

Finding clarity in a moment that’s ripe for new beginnings, changes, and twists

This is where the excitement begins

I fear death like everyone else but less and less it seems these days.  I fly quite a bit around the world on planes, and I often (I believe others do as well) believe it will crash in which compels thoughts about death.  I don’t think of death much outside those times, but, as I travel at least 25 times a year via plane, it’s actually more frequent than most, I imagine….. The point being that in the moment the turbulence hits, and you are sure you are “hitting the land” you quickly review your life, your family, friends, loved ones, and my dog Sadie appears in my thoughts too.

 We try in just a few simple seconds to sum up our lives and do what I believe we assume “god” does- justify our existence as a good one or a bad one by our actions, our contributions, the way we loved, the kind of friends we were, how we treated ourselves, the entire gambit of derivatives to this basically mathematical equation. Did I live as I intended?  My answer has typically been yes to all of it.  With a new pocket of turbulence added to my thoughts over the past year that I spend all my time working and none of it focusing on real, deep, and intimate relationships which I actually crave the older I get. The older I get, the deeper I crave these relationships to be, yes I’m one of those folks who believes the older we get the deeper our relationships needs to be- to be even more honest, with more substance, and more rewarding. This includes not only to our romantic and familiar relationships with simple ones from our butcher, the beautician, our mechanic, and all of the gambits of people in our lives.  As I have been considering these angles in life more and more lately when confronting death on planes, it has really made an impression on me each time I “survive” my near death experience. (That is how it always feels… yes, I am dramatic- as most who know me are aware.)  I, like the rest of the planet, fear death to some extent, but I have made a remarkable and, I believe, very deep connection to death and life recently that helps me remove fear of death from the equation, and, therefore, it has helped remove an even bigger problem- fear of life.  Up until the exact moment you really believe you are going to die or could die, we fear death and grip onto that fear tight like the handlebar of a fast moving bike.  But the moment when we really believe we are actually and sincerely going to die, the fear is released and there is a peace that arrives. The fear dissipates.  In letting go of the fear of losing everything and the inability to control everything, I finally find peace in the moment before death in the shadow where what will happen will happen, and, thus, I have this perfect moment of clarity that the moment is ripe for a new beginning, change, or twist where the excitement of my life will begin.

The words “a fresh start,” by nature, indicate some sort of trouble. After all, there is no rational explanation for the desire for a fresh start without the feeling that something is off kilter. Perhaps the Aries in me is also drawn to these new beginnings. Perhaps it’s the fact I believe complacency is the devil. Perhaps it’s because of my massive yearning to experience as much as possible on this planet and make clear contributions to the improvement of life experience in existence rather than simply just taking up space and time within it.  Either way I sit at this moment, having returned from some world travels, Holland (Amsterdam and the various countryside of Holland), Germany (Berlin), and Israel (Tel Aviv), my travels were specific to this new and latest dilemma of what to do next.  Berlin and my time there was the catalyst for my personal revolution of sorts.  Its creative energy, clean lines, and orderly environment were the perfect place to capture the essence of my realization that change needed to occur for obvious and not so obvious reasons, some discovered at that time and some still had yet to be discovered.

Often in life when one is a decision maker, whether it be for their family, a company, or a country… something shifts. Changes are made that forcefully move us to the place inside ourselves which enable us to, first, recognize the need for change and, two, to seek out the best possible avenues for the deliverance of that change.  This is the moment that for me, any non movement or stagnation is the same as death.  I have spent very little time stagnating in my own life, and, although I have come to lead my own company, sometimes it is hard to decipher stagnation from stability, causing me to find myself tricked a time or two lately.  I believe this is the first admittance of my mistake, not understanding the difference between the two, which of course seems so obvious, especially as I write it, but life in the trenches can appear to be murkier and shinier than the reality.  My vision has been impaired, my path was not far off course, but my vision was just simply blurred….by what I am not sure, possible lack of deep relationships that allow us the different perspectives regarding our realities, perhaps by my workaholic nature and not stepping back to take care of myself the same way I have taken care of my company and others in my life, or perhaps I simply was somewhat naïve and somewhat ignorant as we all are sometimes.  Nonetheless I found myself at this moment both professionally with Ger-Nis and personally with Nissa J experiencing major heartbreak over my lack of understanding of what to do next.  Of course without stagnation as a viable option, a fresh start was my only real choice.  I could have, I suppose, have ran away, which has been a big contender for me since youth. As long as I ran to somewhere exotic, I typically felt it was justified.  But, I guess, as I have gotten older I have learned, grown, or evolved enough, to know that running forever, too, is stagnating, despite its apparent mobility…………….a bit more exciting but equal to it. 

In order to achieve this fresh start, I had to first examine what that actually means.  A fresh start is not a doing anything over, but, rather, refreshing your angle on life from a different starting point. It meant that I had to acknowledge, not only how I came to be where I stood at that moment in time, but all that I now carry with me because of that journey.  This is the moment where the acknowledgement of our strengths helps provide the perfect platform for a fresh start. Without this part of the process present, confusion and denial can cloud the path a great deal.  But I had done my work certain that my new starting point had given me ample tools by which to gauge which path I chose for my future.  Some may say that fresh starts and second chances beget failures but when one truly examines “the fresh start” as a fresh start, it is actually deeply rooted in wisdom gained through adaptability. Without recognizing the need for a fresh start, blindness reigns, and, by blindness, I mean massive confusion and an overall cluelessness regarding growth and progression.  As I sat in Berlin and pondered the fact that in a relatively short period of time these people were able to create one thriving city full of a distinct culture and progress with one fresh starting point, I knew that my path too was in need.

A fresh start- a true fresh start- is ultimately the acceptance of what actually is and a true openness to what can and will be.  This is where I finally bring it back to my crashing plane phobia which eventually enabled me to understand what this feeling inside of me was actually a new peace. It was me letting go of everything for the first time ever in combination with believing in myself for the first time ever.  We live in a world where the word failure (especially the USA) is synonymous with shame and inability. This failure is shunned and like a live puppy being sent in the mail far, far away from us (this did happen recently L  in our country where we rarely, if ever, acknowledge and share feelings with each other.  Sharing feelings with most Americans is like walking around in public in your undergarments- “exposing simply way too much.”  I have never been a believer that this method of sheltering each other from the incredible complications of life will help any of us.  Failures and challenges need to be discussed openly in society, our governments, families, friends, lovers, enemies, and everyone really in order to achieve real and positive growth.  I had forgotten about this belief in my business life which eventually translated into an overcompensation of it in my personal life or a complete lack of it.  I became “just like everyone else” in business and that was never what I sought out to do.  My fresh start was what eventually came to symbolize this discussion again both in my personal life and with my business and my business associates.

Interestingly enough as I have been moving through this process between realizing the need for a fresh start and the actually beginning of it- so too have many peoples of the world.  Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans and soon to the Japanese will begin this journey after the devastation on their Island.  Each of us realizing our own “failures” in our past with what made us complacent and accepting of what we knew was not right, all of us pushed to change and move to a fresh start by pivotal events and all of us inspired by fellow inhabitants of society speaking openly, protesting vigorously, and demanding change all with the lack of fear as if we were at that stage that occurs just before dying where you are simply at peace with that fact and have the focus you need for this great task ahead……………..CHANGE.

As Americans we forget that we too have a democracy and a way of life we need to fight for, and, of course, our lives are very much different for those of the Libyans and Egyptians who have been stifled for so long, but it’s important to understand the relevance of it all; democracy & freedom should have no limits over how much we deserve, we keep going, and, as we make many new fresh starts, each time we begin our journey with more tools, more knowledge, more comrades, and more peace.

A fresh start is ultimately like a hot shower and a clean pair of underwear after a dirty leg of a journey, you will eventually need another if you are on a long journey. I know I am on that long journey, what about you??