Hello everybody. I recently had an opportunity to have a conversation with an old new friend. I say “old” and “new” because it is someone I have known for a while, but with whom I have become newly acquainted on a different level. What a gift!
During this conversation, we discussed the merits of living a life that is full, honest and healthy. As we were talking, I basically distilled it all down to one simple truth: Everything in our lives is either life-affirming or life-depleting. If you think about it, though it may seem too easy at first, it is the basis on which we make many of our decisions. Now, here’s the catch: when we are “asleep” we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to make these decisions consciously. So, what do I mean by asleep?
You’ve seen it – the person who is so busy they don’t know whether they’re coming or going, but they’re always searching for something. Or the person who is so shut down that you can’t talk to them about much of anything and relate. Or perhaps it’s just the person who is wandering through life, lost, yet putting on the bravado of knowing where they are – just so that they don’t get hurt, or get discovered. Being asleep comes in many forms and fashions, and we were all asleep at one point or another in our lives. As children, we’re wide awake – but we slowly learn to shut down and fall asleep, whether through defensive mechanisms or modeling our parents. And once we wake up, it is still possible to go back to sleep. The Matrix movie captured this so well – take one pill and wake up, take the other and go back to sleep. It’s a choice.
Now, where does that leave us on a daily basis? Well, as we begin to wake up, we sometimes see the wreckage of the decisions we made while we were asleep. It does no good to dwell on these. It only serves to look at them and understand them for what they are: lessons. From there, we can begin to make different choices. We can choose to look at everything in our life as either life-affirming or life-depleting. It really can be that simple. We choose to make it more challenging.
As I was talking with this friend, and several others later in the week, it occurred to me that judgment plays a role in this process as well. Someone eating a doughnut might be looked at as making a life-depleting decision; yet how can anyone know that, other than the person eating the doughnut? It seems obvious that seeing someone take illicit drugs or drink to excess is life-depleting, but perhaps it’s one more stone on their path that they need to step on, in order to wake up fully. Therefore, it could be seen as life-affirming, in the big picture. Judgment, in and of itself, is life-depleting. Always has been, and always will be. So, the bottom line is this: everything we do while we are still asleep we can learn from when we wake up.
The Universe always gives us second chances to learn from our mistakes (or life-depleting decisions). And what a gift that is! Just like my meeting my “old” friend again in a “new” way – life is always offering us opportunities to make a different decision. Opportunities to move forward in a new and life-affirming direction.
So, as you start this new week, what do you choose? Would you prefer to make choices that are life-affirming, or life-depleting? It’s your choice. And each morning, each day, each moment – you get the opportunity to learn, grow and make new decisions that enhance your life and your spirit.
May you all have a blessed, life-affirming week!
In Love and Light,
Martina