Lifetimes

Day 81. Lifetimes.

I was talking with a friend a few weeks ago about this, and I truly believe we all live multiple lifetimes. It explains how we can find someone we are very connected to, that it seems like we've know them forever. Since we knew each other in another lifetime, it's easy to find them again in this one. We sometimes bring the baggage of other lifetimes into this one, having not completed the lessons they were meant to teach us. Like a stone around our necks, weighing us down until we can find the cracks that will break it.

We are each given a block of marble when we begin a lifetime, and the tools to shape it into sculpture. We can drag it behind us untouched, we can pound it to gravel, we can shape it into glory. Examples from every other life are left for us to see, lifeworks finished and unfinished, guiding and warning. Near the end our sculpture is nearly finished, and we can smooth and polish what we started years before. We can make our progress then, but to do it we must see past the appearances of age. Richard Bach: One.

It not easy to learn from your mistakes, or from the mistakes of others. Even when they're right there in front of you. We like to think we're smarter than those who went before us, that even if we do the same things we will get a different result. As we grow older, we realize how stupid we are, that if only we'd really listened to our parents, our teachers, authors we've read. If only we could turn back the clock just a decade... maybe two.... so we could talk to our younger selves and tell us "Don't do it!" But to be young and foolish....

Our blocks of marble are indeed ours to sculpt. Some of us decide to just polish them until they shine like the sun, never putting chisel to stone. Why mess with a good thing? Just keep it shiny and new and it will last a lifetime. And then, looking back at the end of our days, do we find that all we have left is a boring but pretty life? I'll watch some of my friends carefully chiseling away, looking to create the perfect sculpture. Their main decision is whether to make their sculpture big or small: do they chip away for years, or wait until time is short and there's not enough time to make it pretty?

 I don't think I want either of those, for myself at least.  I'm going with the "pick a spot and start chipping away, see what's underneath" method. Who knows what's inside? There could be a treasure in there, a vein of gold or at least emeralds, right? Finding out is part of the journey, and I love a good road trip. Especially when there are good friends that I've known forever along for the ride.

Lesson Eighty One: Do you feel the weight of your lifetime around your neck? Are you the one that put the chain there, or is it from your past and you consented to wear it? Think about the burden you bear as the artist of your lifetime, and remember that the only objective is to be happy.

649 to go...