Gazing in the Mirror

October 25 - Life Is An Adventure

An adventure is only an
inconvenience rightly considered.
An inconvenience is only an
adventure wrongly considered.
~ G K Chesterton

My life is an adventure. I know
that wonderful things are going
to happen to me. I know that
everything I do will turn into good
for me and for others.
~ Ernest Holmes

What has your own journey through Life been like ? Mine has been like living at least a handful of different lives, all without having to die and start over again. A man named Lloyd Douglas described it thus – "Our life is like a land journey: too even and easy and dull over long distances across the plains, too hard and painful up the steep grades; but on the summits of the mountain, you have a magnificent view – and feel exalted – and your eyes are full of happy tears – and you want to sing – and you wish you had wings! And then – you can't stay there, but you must continue your journey – you begin climbing down the other side, so busy with your footholds that your summit experience is forgotten."

Unhappiness can set in when we become blind to the larger patterns that are our life. We feel trapped in a limited perspective of possibility. My husband was telling me about a cousin of his. My heart goes out to her. This was when Obama was our president.  She was bitter and angry and blamed that president (who has mixed blood that includes the darker African strains) for national problems. She has an intense resentment towards the very people who make up the bulk of her customers for her private school because they are black, federal government employees. She wanted out of her business but could not sell it for what she felt it was worth in a "down" economy. She and her husband wanted to sell their home in Maryland and move to California but felt they could not get what they had invested in it (their entire "retirement" savings) because real estate values had collapsed over the previous few years. Truly I can't imagine the darkness and self-inflicted suffering that her life appeared to me to be made up of.

A man named Brian Johnson sent out a little inspirational email.  It was an idea of Jack Canfield's (I once attended a workshop on positivity given by him and the resulting increase in self-esteem paved the way for happiness with a new husband to whom I remain married). Here's the little formula that Brian shared – E + R = O. The Event + Our Response = The Outcome. It is true, we ALWAYS have a choice as to how we respond and it's our response mixed with the Event that determines the Outcome. If we feel ourselves in victim mode, we believe that the event equals the outcome and we forget that it is our response that actually determines the outcome. Our response is the place where we are able to "make" the outcome what we choose, instead of perceiving that event as something that has been done to us.

I appreciate deeply the perspective that Aldous Huxley arrived at – "The spiritual journey does not consist of arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one's own ignorance concerning one's self and life, and gradual growth of that understanding, which begins a spiritual awakening. The finding of God is coming to one's self."

When I say that Life is an Adventure, this is certainly a huge aspect of what I see as "the journey". We have the outward changes that take us from infancy, through childhood and then to young adulthood. All along the way, most of us are fearlessly exploring. However, for many people somewhere along the way the pains, sufferings, difficulties and failures all begin to weigh upon us. We hunker down into a boundaried and limited "world" that we are able to understand the rules of. But there is a price – the price is that we begin to stagnate in the predictable boredom that accompanies our standing still.

Brian Johnson suggests that we make E + R = O "a game". That we challenge ourselves to "create" better and better "outcomes" by being more conscious of our choice points. Because Life is actually a continuous series of changes, there is no end and no limit to the choice points that will arise in each of our individual lives, from which we can consciously and intentionally take the proverbial bull by the horns and steer it in a direction that we might find more pleasing to us as an outcome. It certainly beats being mired in a swamp of hopeless assaults.

~ perspective

I walk the path of a long
and unending adventure.
Each day I awaken in a new
place from my resting and
have before me a "blank slate"
of possibilities for responding
to Life from a positive perspective.
Even experiences that appear
negative can result in positive
outcomes if I have the belief
that is the "next destination"
that I can expect to arrive at.
I never see the momentary
stopping point of arriving as the
end of my journey through Life.
Always there is the excitement
of the unknown that lies ahead
to give me a passionate embracing
of the day as it unfolds.

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