business cards

In times of whimsy, or meditation, or perhaps personal crisis, I think back to a conversation I had once, a game of what-if in the future tense.  What if you had six lives to lead, what would you do with them?  Six completely different life-stories to imagine, six chances to span about as much of the breadth of human experience as six drops of water can spread out to cover the ocean, but these are the ones we get to choose, if reality was no obstacle...

I was brought back to this idea while watching a TED talk today by Wade Davis:

http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures.html

In his bio, it says he's a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, and automatically something in me lit up and said, yes, me too me too, how on earth do I get to the point where my business card would read:

Taisha Barton-Rowledge
Explorer

This conversation has evolved over the many years I've been having it, with new partners and perspectives to bounce my ideas off of, and to mirror back to me how my desires are shifting and growing.  In my lifelong struggle with concision (me being the girl who could practically take more time to cover the plot points in a novel than it would take for my captive audience just to go read the damn book), I like this idea of business cards.  If I could have just six business cards, how would I write them out?

Explorer.  Dancer. Truth-teller.  Mother.  Healer.  Listener.  Creator. Motivator. (oops. uh oh. I don't really want a business card calling me mother, because I want to be able to assume that role in all of these lives, but it seemed too important to leave out....) Eight lives? Can we have eight lives??! Maybe I should just say fifteen right now, I know I'll be adding more to the list.  Lover. Reader. Cook (Maker of Meals? Nourish-er?). Smeller-of-roses.  Teacher.  Sharer.

Well and then the trick comes always at the end, when you remember you have just one life, puny and magnificent, to fill with all these things.  Send me what you'd fill your business cards with.  Bon courage.

Sunshine helps with the philosophizing slant to things...