You can’t have it all.

No matter how often you heard this latest tale:
You can have it all, or
Stacked on top of that,
You can have it all, just not at the same time,
and
sneakily infiltrated into that:
Since you can have it all, you should be it all
And to top that off,
The felt-sense that if you can’t do it all, have it all, be it all,
You are falling short
You are missing the mark, somehow, somewhere, something
is wrong with you.

It isn’t.

It’s just: you can’t have it all.

You knew that already didn’t you?
In the quiet moments of honesty,
In the desperate collapses of exhaustion and overwhelm,
In the eternal to-do lists,
In the never-caught-up-mode that has become the normal and the expected,
In the pervasive dissatisfaction left from doing ‘all of it’ half-ass
In the guilt no matter which way you look and turn
In the losing yourself while trying so damn hard to make it work for everyone.

No matter how hard you try,
You notice that you only have two hands
To juggle too many balls
You still have 24 hours each day. No more, no less.
Those days and nights haven’t gotten any longer just because you want to do more, have more, be more.
You still have just one body.
One mind.
Two hands.
You still have to rest.

You can’t do it all.

And you can’t have it all.

And you know what? That’s OK.

In fact, it’s more than OK, it’s good, it’s deeply alright.
It is utterly and completely OK to not have it all. To not be it all.

Just because we have more choices (and with those, more expectations) than we used to,
doesn’t mean they are all ours to step into.

Instead,
to navigate the muchness,
to make sense of the gifts of choice and opportunity

We must learn to discern.
Well, first: to pause, to catch our breath.
To Breathe. Deeply. Fully.
And then, discern.

So,

Find out who you are and listen for what is truly yours to do.
Then do that.
And let the rest go.

Become precise.
Let the rest go.

Choose wisely,
Let the rest go.

Keep listening in.
What is yours to do may change.
Let the rest go.

Become an eternal source of spring cleaning
Sifting through to find that most distilled,
Clarified version of you and yours do to.

And, then: just do that.
Be that.
Have that.
Offer it, your unique recipe,
To serve up and to nourish the world and your darling self with.