Saturday, January 22, 2011

Reality Check

Today Tori's school, Maeser, held their annual "Winterfest." For three weeks in January each student gets to choose a subject to study full-time and then ultimately display their works at this event. Tori chose "Meditation and Photography" and created an incredibly beautiful and meaningful picture book that included some insightful thoughts on reality that were truly calming to me. I so appreciated her message.

Tori is right. Reality is often over-looked as we shoot for the picture perfect life, and work for greatness in this way or that. But perfection does not have to come all at once. We are all different, and it would do us good to stop and appreciate the different stages of life we are each in, share the valuable experiences we have had, and take in the deeper insights others may have to offer us. I must admit, generally speaking I'd like to portray mine as a cartoon-ized, song-filled, Disney-ish life. But the truth is, those bold colors and perfectly outlined images are often muted with feelings, emotions, and even pains of reality that life yields. My life-scene, though not always balanced with bouncy, bubbly music and perfectly genius conversation, is real and wonderful things are coming from it.

This makes me think of when I was a little girl and my Mom would tuck me into bed with two questions. "What was your happy time today?" and "What was your sad time?" I never liked the second question. I would have liked to have hidden everyone's sadness and heartaches and go on believing we all lived in some kind of Disneyland where every day had a happy ending. Overly sensitive, I was (and am)... but there is wisdom and power in acknowledging reality and accepting it. I believe that deep within the quiet and still spaces of our hearts and minds, grow the strong and very real roots of character, strength, power, love, selflessness, and peace.

So... my happy time for today? This gentle reminder. And some dreaming of future happy days with Dania ;o) And my sad time? The realization that I have not always welcomed the opportunity to exist and accept myself and/or others in the "now" and instead have spent an awful lot of time pushing toward goals--some meaningful, some meaningless. Wasted time. Thank goodness for the blessing of a new day ahead, bearing more moments to "be" in, and experience with the amazing people in my life.

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