All things begin as imaginings.

The art of choosing your own adventure.

Summers are (insert swear-y adjective of choice) short here in Canada.

If we’re lucky, we get 3-4 months of glorious weather before we must nook back inside to stay warm. While many of my fellow Canadians attempt to make the most of the season by taking trips to cottages on lakes and booking in activities like camping and fishing, I take a different approach to maximizing this outdoor time.

I celebrate summer by leaving time out of the equation altogether.

I purposely lose track of when I am.

It’s the season for planting seeds and trusting they’ll grow.

As I stretch out my body to soak my skin in the sun, the days too stretch out into nameless strings of light-filled meanderings. In this space of quiet relaxed surrender, I am more in touch with the liminal, with the swirling stuff of living etheric potential that lies beneath the constructs we erect to keep us sane. To keep us in order. To measure our lives by something other than the eternal in and out of breath.

For me, ‘Monday’, ‘Tuesday’, ‘Wednesday’ become continuous moments of now.

My days don’t ask me to wear a certain thing or to be anywhere at a certain time.

Instead, these present moments simply invite me to join them fully as my naked self without donning the need for something to do or somewhere to go. It’s enough to just exist in them, feeling alive inside my skin, equipped with my senses, and accompanied only by daydreams of what pleasures and adventures I wish to experience next. I am endlessly entertained and inspired by the visions that come to me like memories of what my future self managed to find, to have, and to hold.

Speaking of adventures….

As a child of the 80’s, I grew up with a fun series of books called Choose Your Own Adventure. I was OBSESSED with these books and collected as many as I could find.

For those unfamiliar with these stories, the key thing to know is that instead of following a single linear plot-line with a decisive conclusion there are multiple possible endings within each book. The ending that befell you as the reader was dependent upon which path you chose to take when presented with the page that, like a fork in a road, asked you to choose one of two options. Like maybe:

“If you decide you are feeling brave enough to face the dragon to steal back your stolen treasure, you put on your fire-proof armour, sharpen your sword and turn to page 16.

If you decide you’re not in the mood today for being roasted alive like a marshmallow and wanna go skinny-dipping in a cool pond instead, turn to page 21.”

The magic and appeal of these books, aside from the mysterious and ever-changing outcomes, was the access they granted to my sense of agency at an age where freedom was hard to come by. To a free-spirited child under the thumb of mostly unquestionable rules to follow they were a thrilling escape. They offered me, if not a huge bite, a very small but real taste of the flavour of sovereignty.

My fate was in my own hands.

In looking up information on this series I found this:

INTERESTING FACTS

• At least one, but often several, endings in each book depict a highly desired resolution, often involving the discovery of a handsome monetary reward.

• Occasionally, endings result in the death of “you,” your companions, or both. Many times, these sorts of negative endings include the transformation of the “you” into a non-human form, where “you” become permanently stuck in the transformed state.

• Other endings may be either satisfactory (but not the most desired ending) or unsatisfactory (but not totally bad).

• Occasionally a particular set of choices will throw the reader into a loop where they repeatedly reach the same page (often with a reference to a familiar situation). At this point, the reader’s only option is to restart the adventure.

Interesting. Sounds like life. Huh.

My favourite book was Journey Under the Sea. In this story, you as the reader are in charge of a submarine that is travelling down to the dark depths of the ocean on an important quest to do something or other.

After many failed attempts to choose the right path that would bring me back to the surface and out of the submarine alive, and after starting the story over and over in the hopes of escaping the loop of death by drowning, I was struck by sudden insight:

I could read the book backwards.

Why not begin by choosing the ending I most desired?

Once I knew my final destination, I could just trace the path backward, marking the pages that would lead me to it with breadcrumbs, aka, folding the corners down. And so when beginning again at page one, and because I knew where I wanted to go, I knew which forks in the road to take. My path forward was very clear. I simply took the steps forward along the marked path towards my ending of choice.

Needless to say, this Choose Your Own Adventure hack worked every time.

There was no more repeating choices that led me to the same old place, no more walking down the same old path of self-destruction, no more going in circles, no more wasting time, no more doubting my destiny or myself- there was just a clear road to follow that could only lead me to exactly where I wanted to go.

Perhaps life can be lived in very much the same way.

Perhaps it’s meant to be.

Perhaps you are thinking:

“But Jacqueline!

That’s just a silly kid’s book and not real!

What’s real is war and suffering.

Everything is falling down and a breaking apart!

There’s a diminishment of cohesion and an advancement of oppression!

A higher cost of living and lower living standards!

We need to fight the system!!”

I get it.

The system sucks.

Life is weird. And getting weirder.

Every day it seems there’s less and less in our control and more and more being centrally controlled by those who have no business handling so much power.

There is an undeniable onslaught of clowny worldly shenanigans that are destructive to minds and destabilizing to our senses, shaking our footing away from what once was solid ground, causing us to question the very basics like what is up and what is down. The inversion perversion is giving us vertigo.

But hear me out.

We don’t need to fight for something we already have.

We just need to use it.

We’ve been trained away from remembering how to dream, from how to envision what can be despite its absence in our now.

When all of our attention is only ever going outward and we remain trapped under the spell of our programming that tells us to “fall in line with what is because that’s just the way it is”, we are forgetting to use the gifts we’ve been given.

When we didn’t have phones to look at wherever we went and never-ending feeds to ingest, we naturally fell to daydreaming of desires, contemplating mysteries, to fantasizing about what turns us on, whether it be people, places, or things.

Solutions. Inventions. Art. Technology. Music. All things that make life better.

We dabbled in the past-time of make-believe.

All things begin as imaginings.

Those of you who are familiar with my stance from reading my past writing know that I encourage the exploration of knowing thyself and that I swear by it as the antidote for the external chaos afoot.

This endorsement is rooted in my respect for the fact that we can only control ourselves.

The minute you attempt to impose your control over another is the minute you become the thing you are against. There must be another way….

To clarify, the art of "knowing ourselves” is not to be confused with narcissism to any degree, nor is it a self-centered lack of concern for others or interest in serving your family, community, and society. In reality, it’s the opposite.

Only one who is independent from a ventilator can assist others to breathe the same way.

It is knowing what we value and then knowing what we are capable of so that in the face of any threat we can take an unwavering stand with conviction to protect it.

It is the ultimate in taking ownership of who and what you are.

It’s learning to trust that you can trust yourself.

It’s facing yourself in the mirror and being honest about what works and what needs to change.

It is the rite of passage that ripens us into full recognition of our individual gifts and abilities while deepening our resonant connectivity to others, to all life, to all that is.

It is knowing our nature. Divine Masculine, Divine Feminine.

It is the claiming of our agency. Our sovereignty.

Our imagination, creativity, curiosity, empathy, intuition, humour, playfulness.

Our ability to choose our own adventure.

The sun has danced a path across the sky.

Meanwhile, the path I chose today has led me to still be in my pajamas as I enjoy the warmth of the day on my deck writing all of what you’ve read here.

Time shmime.

My goal was to write a new post. And I’m doing it. It’s been far too long.

My desire was to encase into words the ephemeral, shapeless idea that’s been kickin’ around in my head for a few days so that it may exist outside me as a real thing. An offering to this world in the shape of letters, a marker of my existence.

Before I began writing, I already knew that the end goal- a written piece- was a given.

That it would be real was inevitable. I never doubted that I would be eventually pushing ‘post’, and that it would be going out to all of you (my darling) subscribers, and would then become either someone’s trash or treasure.

Whatever happens after I complete this and send it off is no business of mine.

My goal has been fulfilled by staying the course I knew was going to lead me to it.

I used my agency to take the steps to get up, open Substack, and start typing. I stayed focused and undistracted and chose to trust myself over doubt myself. By using the powers of imagination and creativity, I made manifest my vision. I got what I wanted. I have arrived securely at my desired destination.

It may seem like a small thing- to write a silly little post and then share it.

To create something out of nothing.

But I say, if we can create small things then we can create big things, too.

Let’s dream outside the box and tell those who say we can’t to eff off.

The world may indeed be crazy but we are not powerless in the face of it.

Our power to choose our own adventure is always waiting for us to choose it.

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