As if my life were...

When I was young I went around as if my life were a movie and I was the star—besides wanting to be an actress in the theater. My life/movie wasn’t so interesting really, but I had a big imagination and I imagined myself the heroine of my “story.”

They say that life is not a dress rehearsal, but, gosh, we have to live totally improvising, without a rehearsal of any kind, and I wonder, how many times have we wanted to repeat some “scene” in order to say something different or change our role? It’s not fair. Too bad, the past is over and we have to continue and try to “act” better next time. So then comes “forgiveness” or “asking for forgiveness.” When we don’t act well and we want to change the scene but since you can’t, the next scene that comes along is the forgiveness scene…and that’s the way we go, each time improving our “acting.”

It’s inevitable to makes mistakes in this life without rehearsals but we shouldn’t put ourselves down because of them because tomorrow is another day, another chance to improve our acting and it’s possible, of course it’s possible to improve. One way to make this happen is to give thanks for everything we have including the moments when we think we have ruined everything. When we are grateful we are not judging and we begin to accept everything as it is. It’s funny but I see forgiveness as the opposite of judgment. If I am forgiving I am not judging and I feel better. The trick is to learn from our mistakes.

The other day we were walking in the woods and we saw a stream that was full and overflowing and afterward we sat down to meditate there. It wasn’t cold and a hymn from my childhood came into my mind, all of the verses and the words touched me very deeply because they expressed exactly what I am living right now in my present life. I hadn’t thought about that hymn in more than forty years, but in that moment the lyrics came to me word by word and not missing any verse.

Did I say my life is not interesting? No true—when these things happen I find it very interesting. So that’s the way it is. Period.

Soy Lorena.
12/7/08