Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 27

Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go on.
--Andrew Jackson


I sure hope he credited his mama for those words of wisdom. I know that's where he heard them first.

Life is the sum of small decisions. Everyday, I face choices, some of which I would rather avoid. But even when I skirt around them, or delay them by agonizing over the details and possible consequences, or ignore them, I'm making a decision.

I love my mother-in-law. She is organized, kind, deliberate in her actions, conscientious about making her house a home even though her children are grown and married. She has difficulty making decisions, however. For example, she will shop every store in town looking for the perfect curtain rod. Not because she can't find anything she likes, but because she fears leaving unexplored options on the table. Meanwhile, the bare windows provide no privacy.

We are the decisions we make and the ones we let other people make for us and the ones we refuse to make and the ones we can't make. Where we end up when all is said and done greatly depends on all the little choices. Finding the balance between deliberating our options and taking action says a lot about who we are and what we value. Certainly, curtain rods won't throw off the course of my mother-in-law's life, but is thinking a little longer worth its weight in time she could spend doing something else more rewarding?

Southern ladies don't necessarily leap into things, letting their skirts fly over their heads for the whole world see their foundation garments. But they certainly don't sit around wringing their hands about the little stuff, either. Because, it's up to us to model lives well-lived, time well-spent, for those who are watching our every step.

So, what are you going to do? Are you going to sit around and think about living fearlessly, or are you going to get up and go do it?

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: It's about making a choice of course! Have you ever watched an old movie in which a character approaches the bar and the bartender asks, "What'll it be?" The hero or heroin responds, "The usual, Wallace," and the bartender says, "Sure thing. A strained Tom Collins, no ice, two olives, and a dash of V-8 coming right up."

Okay, I ad libbed quite a bit, but you get the picture. Our character in question is known by his/her own personal drink. I think you know where I'm headed with this. Today, you've got to choose your drink; the one that says who you are, the one that friends and family know you by, the usual. Is it chocolate milk on ice? Is it Diet Coke with a twist of lemon and a dash of leftover coffee from the morning brew? Is it an Upside Down Southern Belle with a parasol?

You decide.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 1

I present to my readers, the Day 1 of the Southern Girl's Primer on Living Fearlessly. Make sure you do the assignments found at the end of each day. Before long, you'll be living a new, more vibrant life, without ever giving up your neutral decorating pallet:

There are opportunity costs built into everything we choose. We often overlook the fine print at the bottom of the contract and sign a waiver without reading it. If we didn't we would never make a decision or move forward. Making an informed decision is preceded by long periods of failure to act.

I've decided enough is enough. I will live fearlessly. I'm throwing caution tape to the wind, unfurling it like big yellow celebration streamers. Let it wrap someone else in complacency.

Oh heavens! What am I saying? A good southern woman can't do that! We have rules, we have standards, for goodness's sake, we have etiquette to follow. I would simply die if I thought my neighbors disapproved of my behavior.

But there must be a way. Certainly living fearlessly doesn't mean wearing a black dress to a wedding or a hot pink cocktail number to a funeral. I don't have to paint my monogram on the garage door or hang out in a juke joint to live fearlessly. Southern girls can honor their heritage, keep their proper prim, and still throw a buttered biscuit now and again. We can know who our people are, compose a polite invitation or thank you note, deliver casseroles to the sick and deceased, and still sweeten our tea with pure sugar.

Take me, for example. For six years a bare bulb hung from the ceiling of my 1915 home. I decided when we moved in that I would buy a crystal chandelier to match the huge ones in the living room and dining room. I feared marring the traditional architecture of my home by hanging something more modern. After six years of concern, worry, saving, angst, searching, I found myself in a lighting store making an impulse buy.

I purchased a walnut colored pendant fixture. After my husband hung it, I looked up and realized what a fool I had been all these years, tangled up in caution tape. It wasn't a crystal chandelier that the room needed, it was a touch of me.

YOUR FIRST ASSIGNMENT: What your life needs is a touch of YOU in it. Today go buy a piece of canvas, an old board, a slip of tin roof, anything with a paintable flat surface (but, do be tasteful, no saw blades or birdhouses). Using whatever paints and brushes you have, create your own folk art, abstract art, self-portrait, etc. There are three rules to this:
1) Do not paint what other people expect you to paint.
2) Your finished work must be displayed in a common area of your house, where guests to your home will see it.
3) You may never, under any circumstances, including being pressured by a realtor or interior decorator, make excuses for it, diminish it verbally, or move it to a less conspicuous area; that would be like badmouthing YOURSELF and hiding away in a closet and we all know a proper lady would never poor mouth the family name.