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I do a lot of questionable things.
I could blame it on my heart, because I follow my heart at all costs, but that doesn't make me look like less of a fool sometimes. (Stupid heart.)
Once, I gave up spending a lifetime with the love of my life because getting married didn't feel right. It was either marriage or the highway. I chose the highway.
I gave up a killer spot in heaven when I left God's one and only true church. (Goddamn you, heart!)
I closed my music teaching business and went back to waiting tables for a living. With a college degree. Awesome. (Winner winner chicken dinner!)
Oh, and let's not forget the time I'd finally worked through my God and Jesus issues enough that I could laugh about them. So I posted a funny (blasphemous) joke about Jesus on my Facebook page, which unbeknownst to me, was being spied upon by my very Christian family. (Not my best move.)
I said fuck once (or twice) on FB, too and got ripped a new one by a few disapproving readers who said I wasn't being very spiritual on my "spiritually minded" Facebook page. Oops, I didn't know spirituality had rules! (If it does, then I quit.)
I've left places where all the action is because I heard a different beat to a different drum somewhere else. I've walked alone. Burned bridges. Peeled myself out of too-tight labels and boxes. Murdered my reputation. Missed chances, lost friends, and bawled my eyes out as everything good and amazing seemed to be passing me by. And all in the name of following my heart. (Fuck you, heart.)
You'd think with all the "unenlightened" things I've done, I would have ruined my chances at happiness, intimacy, partnership, and purpose by now. You think I would have ruined my own destiny. But, ironically, I've never felt more fulfilled by those things than right now.
Here's why I think that is:
1) I'm willing to accept full responsibility for the implications of living my own truth. Sometimes following my heart means I disappoint people I love. Sometimes it means I miss out. Good opportunities really do pass me by. And that's just the big old paradox of life right there. There's a price and a pleasure to everything. I haven't gone further into the blissfulness of my own truth without also going deeper into the shadows of it. And when you can hold both of those things at the same time, it's a ridiculously amazing, very "grown-up," expansive feeling.
2) You can cross the line, say too much, step out of time, burn bridges, and pass up chances. But if your truest reason for doing so is to be as TRUE as you can possibly be to being TRUE to your TRUTH in every step, then you can't fuck up your own destiny.
What's truly for you will not pass you by.