Day 9 in A Month of Gratitude, #AMOG, and today, I am #grateful for my life's narrative. A narrative is basically a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and usually it has a #heroic figure of near epic proportions that is the #protagonist who acts and is acted upon. The simplest of stories is the triumph of good over evil, where good saves the day and everyone lives happily ever after.
Looking back, I wonder what might have been if I knew what I know now, about my own life, and about the world. Would I have made the same decisions and choices and lived my life this very same way? Folks say they live with no regrets but I don't know if that is really possible. I think we have no regrets because we do not examine our lives. I know I have regrets, and I think it's important to acknowledge them and learn to live with them.
I like to think I am the heroine in my own story, acting more than I am acted upon, choosing to do the right thing at all times, trying my best to wrestle a victory for good over evil, largely in myself, and sallying forth to dispel gloom wherever I can by shining the light of love into darkness. Oh my. Which fairy tale have I been living, or aspiring to live out? Keep the expectations real and realistic, Pav! 🤣
In reality, I'm struggling, everyday, to manage muscle and joint pain, recurrent migraines, monitoring abdominal changes for possible obstructions, and also doing all the things I truly enjoy... morning walks, cooking for the kids, spending time with any one of my kids who is available, expanding my counselling work and skills, playing my cello really badly, painting with forgiving acrylics, watching my fav stuff on Netflix, and relaxing at the end of a long day as a low grade fever sets in. My life's daily narrative is hardly exciting or heroic, it simply is a rather ordinary day in a rather ordinary life.
But is that enough for me? When I die, I don't want to be remembered as the vaguely nice, somewhat eccentric woman, with so many kids, who made yummy mutton curry, loved butterflies, magpie robins, and trees, who overthought everything, wrote too much, had a touch of the melancholy, and had some strange chronic ailment. Living a life with chronic illness is already practically an heroic endeavour. And yet I want my life's narrative to be a little more heroic than "she once lived, but now is no more".
How does one live heroically? A good place to start is to look back and #acceptthepast. Can't change that, so #forgive yourself, and those who have hurt you, and move on. Next, one can choose daily to #liveinthemoment, which is so much harder to do than one might think. The past intrudes, often with memories of more blissful times, and the future beckons, often with illusions of what might come, and so the present is neglected, often because it is painful to sit with one's emotions and work through suffering or difficulty.
But facing the dragon, and slaying it is what the hero does. He doesn't flee from the needful, or hide away from the difficult. He embraces it, takes it on, and overcomes. He is not driven by fear, though he is afraid, he is driven by love. And what more heroic act can there be in life than to choose a life driven by love, that no matter what happens, we choose love above everything else? Instead of looking for love to visit us, we see ourselves as love itself, quite capable of being the hands and feet of God on earth. We are the heroes of our own narratives, we get to write our own story. Let it be one where #loveconquersall!
Some day, my life will be over, and I'll be a memory to those who knew me. And yet, I think in their minds, a little "Book of Pav" will exist, filled with encounters, conversations, memories, arguments, hurts, and hopefully, much love. I own a journal that has a cover that I think I'd love to have as the cover for this imagined "Book of Pav". It has a cross, and the impression of jewels, with possibly Celtic, or Gaelic symbols, with bronzed gold, turquoise blues and deep reds in muted tones. I love that journal, both it's cover and content, as I used it when I was on a month long silent retreat in Sydney in 2013. Whenever I think of my life's narrative and the years that are to come in the second half of my life, as I pursue a more heroic plot line while mindfully living in the present, I hope that my story will be beautiful, outside, and inside, the "Book of Pav".❤
#AMOG #AMonthOfGratitude #October #LifeNarrative #Narratives #Protagonist #Heroic #BookOfPav #AcceptThePast #ForgiveYourself #ForgiveOthers #LiveInTheMoment #BeDrivenByLove #LoveConquersAll #MentalHealthAwareness #MentalHealth #IMadeItThroughDayNine
Thanks for reading,
Pav
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