So, I love this idea about “the limiting story that we make up about ourselves”…
It feels so relevant and true.
But, its not easy to see or understand the story that we make up about ourselves. It feels so much like reality (because that is what we make it), that its hard to know where the story ends and reality starts…
It’s like pulling the end of the tape on the roll when its been ripped off… you know its right there… you can feel it… but you just can’t get your fingernail underneath it…
Where does your limiting story end and your reality begin?
So, lets shelf that, just for a minute…
Let’s talk about the limiting story that we make up for the people around us…
OUCH… this one stings… and its so much easier to spot.
Before you practice on yourself, watch someone else carefully.
Watch your spouse interact with your kids.
Watch your kids interact with your spouse.
Watch your manager interact with someone else in the company.
Watch … watch… watch and pay attention…
and LEARN.
My poor parents… I pick on them so.
But, I only pick on them, because they are my training ground. They are where I learned disharmony and harmony first.
It’s like when Rocky Balboa goes back to train in Philly… or in Russia… it’s going back to my roots ;-)
I watch them now… and they are lovely… and they are older… and their stories have become very, very set.
My mother thinks my dad is always yelling, even when he is not.
She thinks that he never asks for her opinion, even when he does.
My dad thinks my mother can’t engage in conversations about her own future, even though she can and WANTS TO!
Watching them fascinates me. It no longer saddens me, because I get now that they will never change, that they can know no other way to look at the world.
The stories they have set about each other, about politics, about modern food, about each other’s families, about friends, about where they live…
My father will be 86 in a month, and my mother will be 78 this year, and she has early onset Alzheimers…
They live very much like their book has already been written… and they are simply reading it out loud to each other everyday. The parts that don’t mesh just won’t mesh. The fights are the same everyday. But, I really no longer think they even feel angry at each other, they are like two actors in a play that has been going on for decades… waiting for something to change on the set.
In listening to the Buddhist philosophies, I think about the words… “Why do we now think that suffering is not a part of life? Why do we now expect a life free of suffering?”
Suffering will come, and when it does, will we have been fearing it ahead of time and overwhelmed by its presence… or will we have been living in the moment, enjoying the ride, and when it comes, will we have the mindfulness and to strength to navigate it… and survive it… and celebrate it?
“I am the author
Life is my book
My only work art…”
From my poem Consequence
I have always taken pride in the book that I have been writing my whole life in my own mind…
These days I am questioning it…
What book have I been writing? What story have I been telling myself about myself? About the people I love? Am I writing stories that define a beginning and leave the upside with no limit? Am I writing stories that limit the characters?
Maybe life should not be a book…
But an impromptu play…
Maybe we should act it out and not write it down…
I love it when a new thought rearranges so many of the old ones…
I am the author… and my life is my only work of art…
But, maybe its meant to be an experiential art form…
Maybe its like a firework show that doesn’t allow pictures…
Maybe its like a song that never gets replayed…
Maybe its like a poem that never ends and is spoken to friends, never hitting pen to paper…
Be careful, my friends, of the stories we write…
If we can be true to our artform, maybe we can live forever…
Or at least until we die…
Never having wasted a moment…
Never having to tell the story a second time…
Yours in the endless pursuit of harmony,
Nestor Benavides