Living In The Moment

"Well I'm almost finally, finally, out of words." -Jason Mraz (You and I Both)

I've felt a lot of things lately that I haven't been able to pin down into a definitive statement. I know how they feel and what they mean, but it's a language of the soul that keeps speaking out. I can't put it into English, I can't craft it with letters. If I could grasp your hand and siphon the feeling to you, I very well would.

All I can do is toss literary darts in the general area of the target and hope to come out making sense.

I know the following statement to any blog reader of mine is redundant to say the least, but this is were it begins: I'm in a separate state of being when I listen to Jason Mraz. There's nostalgia and there's hope for Virginia to come around, but there is something else that makes it so...makes it so expedient and desirable that I remain there, in this state of being. I felt it irrepressibly tonight when Erin put my dated Mraz Mix in her car's CD drive, and it was such a presence that I felt I had to draw attention to it. So I said: "I always feel...more myself when I listen to him."

And though I've said this and thought this before, it took that moment to connect what Jason's music had lead my soul to experience for years to my recent moments of confidence. Moments that, looking back, happened as they did because I was acting more myself; I was showing up as me.

I haven't read the scriptures in some time. I've been desirous for personal revelation, but I haven't tried to track it down. But lately I can't help but feel that the Lord is guiding me to my answers in the way He knows I'll find it. It's the only place I've been looking.

Jason Mraz.

For the first time in my fandom I have fully connected with an album not because it was catchy or the lyrics made me think or I couldn't get over how phenomenal his scatting is; it's been because that's what I've needed to hear.

I've felt these things for so long, thought about them, almost understood them, but I couldn't put it into words what they meant. Jason did it for me:

"I'm letting myself off the hook for things I've done, I let the past go past. ...I'm letting go of the thoughts that do not make me strong. ...I can't walk through life facing backwards. I have tried, tried more than once to just make sure, and I was denied the future I'd been searching for. I turned around and hurt no more by living in the moment."

There has been much more that has struck me, but this seems to be the overbearing message of it all. This is why my life to this point has been so lackluster and passive and timid. I haven't seemed to "let go of what I know I don't know."

Life hasn't worked for me because I haven't shown up as me.

Today I did it, subconsciously. I showed up as me. And the lightness of my soul that accompanied that moment is the same breath Jason's music breathes into me.

I am more myself when I listen to him sing, but I'm actively striving to be myself even when the music's off.

"And I know I only do this by Living in the Moment."