WHO NEEDS BEGINNINGS?
I am getting into continuation more & more these days. I keep finding wisdoms which, I told a friend, bring me up so short, I leave mental skid marks. I know these are trite as cracks in sidewalks to others, but maybe you can share where I am if I share these:
[from The Midnight Library by Matt Haig]
“Sometimes the only way to learn is to live.”
“Never underestimate the big importance of small things.”
“Nora had always had a problem accepting herself. She always had a sense she wasn’t enough. She imagined now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn’t reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed. She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. Just another sentient animal trying its best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.”
These thoughts appear as I imagine my life as one long, tubular existence. Passing through corridors of “getting to where I want to be” which open into ballrooms or bedrooms or dappled forest clearings. The corridors have windows where I can see where I think I want to be. Arrival is one thing. Getting there a second. Accepting & staying there yet a third. That’s how possibilities become endless. Getting these sorted in my soul is like separating a dish of cooked spaghetti into individual strands. Just pour on the sauce & enjoy the meal!
Where’s your focus today? What are you doing for yourself or others? One morning on an early walk in T or C, I helped a woman using a walker to get a package from her mailbox. I thought how great it was to get my good deed for the day out of the way early on. I don’t think I’ve gotten all my good deeds out of the way yet…tho some came on early & were accomplished without fuss. Or even anyone noticing. Hey! I look at it as a reminder for self & others. It doesn’t look like I can do it alone anytime soon. If I reach out for help, I need to be prepared, indeed eager, to help those others.
The St. Francis Serenity Prayer comes to mind. There wouldn’t be so many quotes like that, nor would these be so popular – bookmarks, signs, bumper stickers, slogan posters – if they were estranged from practice or consciousness. That recognition tweaks a smile that we already knew that! The real smile comes with its accomplishment in daily life.
Leaving off here with one more quote, this one from Fall Out Boy:
“You are what you love & not who loves you.”
And you don’t have to quote me on that.
Riding the Light 
Great insights, Carol. I learned, in January of 1994, that self-acceptance is the beginning of acceptance of others and of life in general. I simply decided to accept myself as I imagined that God accepts me–totally, unconditionally, just as I am. No more trying to please everyone. No guilt or shame. Just observing the results of my actions and seeking to do better in the future.
Every experience is simply an opportunity to learn. But actions still have consequences. So the better my actions are, the fewer problems their consequences cause me. I still am as God created me–His holy child, on an experience of learning.
Self-acceptance is the beginning of acceptance of others and of life in general. Accepting ourselves just as we are makes it easier and more likely that we’ll accept others just as they are–people who are doing the best that they know, and are willing to do, at that moment in time, every one still a holy child of God.
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Wonderful insights we cannot get enough of in a society lauding possessions as accomplishments… I wrote a poem one day talking about getting back to heaven & God lowering His specs to ask me how it went while I hollered, “Father! You’re not going to believe this!”
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I suspect that He who gave us the opportunity to do anything we wish (free will), no matter how self- or other-destructive, to show us how much control we personally have in creating our own reality, for better or worse, can certainly believe anything we could ever imagine, to do or not do. After all, He made us and gave us that ability, and He knows how the movie ends! — better than we could ever have imagined.
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Actually, with this Free Will factor, I think even heaven awaits the turn-out. It’s up to us to see it through to highest & best for all concerned. Thanks!!
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