The journey through life is essentially a journey through our imperfections. Honest reflection on our experiences grows us, and contributes abundantly to making the lives of others on this journey less precarious. From beginning to end, there are circumstances that make us who we are that are at times uncomfortable to talk about. The instabilities we experience are mostly rooted in this truth.
We must all, every day, squarely face the stories that have gone into making us who we are. If we do not, we will find them staring us down at the most inopportune moments of our lives. For better or for worse, they are there. It therefore becomes our wise duty to face them, and in doing so, free ourselves from them where necessary.
The tyranny of those experiences can be broken. Our discomforts about them can be relieved. The dysfunctions that they breed can be aborted. The dis-ease they generate can be resolved, and we do need to engage in this very necessary process of healing.
If we do not, the possibility that we might be able to engage in positively creative relationships is vastly diminished. The truth does set us free. The courage to face our truth is the most force-full stimulus in our liberation both as individuals, and as communities.
We can overcome the potential stumbling blocks in our personal histories by facing them with open and contrite hearts. A creative retelling of the stories of our experience enables us to courageously declare the truth that can potentially transcend those facts. This truth is, simply stated, that regardless of the circumstances of our beginnings, and regardless of the experiences that have brought us to where we are now, we remain able to determine what we will become.
An interesting thing happens when we engage in the liberating humility of truth telling: we find out that our stories are not unique. There is a sense in which our lives are the proverbial comedy of errors. It is one of the secretly appealing things about the experience of humor.
We laugh about the mis-steps of others because we are able to see ourselves in the mirror of their shared experiences from a comfortable distance. Pause for a moment and think of the possibilities for our lives if we were to not get stuck in the rut of taking ourselves so seriously, especially with regard to those experiences we would love to forget.
We are the masters of our destinies. Say that loudly and laugh. Yes, laugh. Relieve your chest of the burden of merely being able to wish that things were different. Make the essential difference in your life. Take a deep breath, engage all your senses, summon all the energies of your soul, and make this the first day of the rest of your life.
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