New
Definition
“One
power we gain on our journey to the heart is the ability to redefine
what we believe. We learn to see things in a new way.”
Melody
Beattie (Journey to the Heart)
We
humans have a tendency to decide very early on exactly how our lives
should look, and then go about trying to shape them to fit the
picture. It's good to have goals, but what happens when life takes an
unexpected turn? Suppose the perfect marriage turns into the ugly
divorce, or the perfect boss hands us a pink slip. Suddenly, we are
casualties in our own drama. After much suffering, most of us go
right back to manipulating life to fit “the way things ought to be”
according to our master plan. Speaking for myself, this treadmill is
very familiar.
We
do, however, have the power to change the scenario. We can redefine
what we believe about life. If you're anything like me, quite a bit
of sweat is involved. First, we need to uncover our original
expectations, what efforts we made to realize them, and what went
wrong. We can then decide exactly what we'd like to do as a result,
and maybe even outline steps toward that goal. There's
only one problem with that—there will still be unexpected turns in
the road. We will always need to accommodate what we cannot foresee.
In other words, our control of life, even our own life, is seriously
limited.
Another
possibility is that we could just see where life takes us. Think of
it as driving down a long highway. The scenery changes—you go
through mountains, valleys, prairies, deserts, swamps. You don't
rail against these changes, you just roll on through. If we expect
life to change, if we accept that the scenery will vary as we go
along, we can make peace with it. We can even look forward to
exploring what's around the next bend. Instead of wasting all our
energy trying to straighten the road, we can enjoy the curves. If we
can bless our original plan and wave goodbye to it, who knows what we
may discover along the way.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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