Be awesome

One of my goals on PopClogs is "Be awesome." My adding it to my goal list was completely tongue-in-cheek, but I find it a good tool for focusing my intentions.

What does it mean to me to be awesome? First of all, it is to be genuinely myself. Which means to take others' feelings into consideration. To refrain from saying or doing something that would intentionally or unintentionally hurt someone else. It is important to me to treat others as I would be treated, and this is a huge first step. I sleep much better in my own skin when I do this.

I could take that one step further, though. Go out of my way to say and do things to make people feel good. That's less passive, though. It sets me up for being rebuffed. Takes me out of my comfort zone. But it would mean so much more than merely doing no harm.

As a parent, my goal is to be the kind of mom who steers her children with love and gentle humor. I am not this kind of mom right now. I am more the bribe-and-bark sort of mom, with the occasional guilt trip and threat thrown in. I have a very headstrong daughter, and barking orders is efficient. But it makes me feel like a heel. So I am working on this.

I'd like to do more than that, though. I want to be the mom who helps her kids fly, not just the mom who keeps her kids safe. I could stick them in a hole for 18 years, and they would be perfectly safe. But what kind of life would that be? What kind of life would it prepare them for?

As a citizen, I want to take a more active role in my town, in my community, in the world. Recycle. Reuse. Repurpose. Give. Get involved. I don't know how I am going to go about this when I can barely stay on top of the laundry, but I'm giving it thought. If I want to live in a good place, I need to do my part to make it a good place.

It's a tall order, being awesome. An open-ended prompt. I could never possibly finish being awesome.

I like goals like that, though. It's satisfying to create a to-do list and check it off, but you don't grow that way. You grow by setting a bar that you can never stop raising.