The Key to the Golden Door

Last weekend, I had the joyful and insightful experience of taking my 86-year-old mother and her friend on a three-day trip through Yellowstone. There was lots of talking, driving, oohing and aahing at animals, waterfalls, vistas and geysers. It was a very special three days of togetherness with two women from an older generation without the normal distractions of life.

As we talked, my mom’s friend shared that as she grew up, no one ever asked her what she wanted in life. She got the message that the goal was safety and security. Now in her 80’s with children and grandchildren, she laughed about how she learned the hard way that there was no Golden Door of security. She originally thought that once you married the right person, had the right job and raised the right children, all would be golden, but soon realized it didn’t always work that way. She now says creating joy, peace and success is her daily practice and she is finding the golden door within.

The Golden Door is Just as Murky for the Young

In another recent conversation, my oldest son told me that last year he thought he had life set – a great girlfriend with whom he was looking for a house and work projects on positive fire. Then a year later, the girlfriend wasn’t in the picture (no house was bought) and business had its normal ups and downs. It was a challenging and powerful year for him. His goal of “being set” evaporated into the journey of life.

So often we think that if we just get there, all will be fine – wherever there is. But all too often we realize that life is ever changing. What if there is no golden door except within ourselves and how we show up every day?

You Have to Show up to Realize Your Dreams

It doesn’t mean we can’t have fabulous audacious dreams and goals. Dreams and goals motivate us and bring out our best work and creativity. Yet, if the view that achieving that goal is that a golden door will open and we will live happily ever after, we may want to recheck our thinking.

What if every day we set the intention to walk through our own golden door of how we want to show up in the world? We breathe in the love, trust, cooperation, synergy, creativity, honesty we want to have in the world. We set an intention to discover, see, feel, remember all the ways the world is helping us get there. We write down those reflections at the end of the day.

Step by step, we unfold into our highest, strongest, most courageous selves, knowing the golden door of joy and success is within us. I look at powerful women like my mom in much later chapters of their lives, having lived through many, many moments of sorrow and joy. They carry their own light and nothing can take that light away. It makes me proud to be my mama’s daughter (and maybe I’m starting to understand where some of my life’s passions began).

And it makes me smile to see my son becoming aware of this in his 20s.