We are the story between the bookends
Life begins and ends the same for everyone. We are born, and we pass on. It is the miracles that happen in between that gives unique individualism. Some are born with all the luxuries and talents of a blessed life. They have the apparency to need nothing. This headstart does not guarantee a successful, happy life. Many are born with quite a lot less, some disabled and with unfathomable challenges. These disadvantages certainly do not ensure failure in any sense of the thought. Aside from this, everyone travels through time creating personal experiences called a lifetime.
Every moment of each day, pages are filling the space between the ‘bookends’ with a life story. What we did, what others did to us and so on. School, work, marriage, parenting, are some of the novels that accumulate. Picking and choosing the significance of every moment experienced, the chapters get completed with a happy or not so happy ending. Everyone is writing their story choosing how to tell it.
Listening to other’s woeful stories, we sometimes wonder why their issues are so troublesome. Thinking we have the answer, we lend our opinion. They often refuse to jot it down in their storybook. As we hear similar stories over and over again, we try to give our associates, friends and loved ones a page from our storybook. Surprisingly, this kindness gets rebuked with the label of a know it all.
It has occurred to us that maybe it is not anyone’s place to resolve everyone’s problems with a self-sense of omnipotence. Possibly one’s answers are not the answers for other fellows.
How then can we help our fellow man and those we love?
Write a better storybook of our own. Create our life book, so it is inspirational. Make it a page turner so that others would want to read it if they liked. Use a pen that writes clearly so that each journal entry is appealing and non-threating. Mostly, make our life story a validation of everyone’s turmoil, freeing all from the chains of guilt for all the imperfections and missteps. Instead, penning words of esteem for everyone’s achievements for all the challenges or hardships that each endured and overcame on their own. In short, lead by living a good example.
The story we write about ourselves will be the one remembered.
Be Well, Have Gratitude & Spread Goodwill