Where Roads Diverge? Contemplate Stories that Model Your Options

Should you stay or should you leave; accept an offer, or not; go in one direction that invites you forward, or another?  We each stand at meaningful crossroads sometimes, needing to make difficult choices that could affect our Life Story either greatly or somewhat “ever after.”

You could start by listing some stories that include significant choices, especially if those choices are like yours. 

Here’s the idea: find a story or list a set of stories in which a character is faced with a similar choice and consider what direction the character takes, whether it works out well or not, and how you feel about the character’s choice and its results. Would you have made the same decision in the character’s shoes, or not?

To model the approach, here are some stories I might currently list along with brief synopses of the choices involved in the story:

• Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse:  Stay home in a pampered, sheltered environment with expectations of an easy, privileged existence, or leave his father’s safe and opulent world to experience humanity and the world in all its misery, and splendor.

• Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken:  that he took the less traveled path most others would not have chosen, “and that has made all the difference.”

• Defending Your Life: The Mel Brooks character often chose the least risk or the safest course of action rather than the bravest, so he is judged harshly between lives; versus the Meryl Streep character, who always chose the riskier path in service to life and others. She will certainly be “moving on.”

• Lost Horizon: Robert Conway must choose between life in the world as a well-known and respected public servant, or to follow his heart and forge a difficult passage to return to Shangri-La, where spiritual enlightenment, potential for solitary but global service, and love await his return.

• The Razor’s Edge: Again, life in the familiar world of home and normative community values versus a more solitary life seeking to develop and share the fruits of spiritual exploration.

My story choices are much of a piece, I see, in that the characters face similar challenges contrasting normative community lives of ‘getting by’ in a respectable, easy fashion, or stepping off into an out of the ordinary life of more solitary spiritual adventure.  On which path can they achieve deeper enlightenment pairs with which path will lead to greater opportunities for unique service though in less guaranteed or publicly acknowledged and sanctioned modes.

This exercise elevates, for me, the nature of a meaningful crossroads I am at personally, and that is helpful.  The set of synopses are contemplation seeds that help to reveal many angles on some of  my own current underlying questions.  I have found over the last few days of contemplating these stories that I have gained a much greater clarity about my path forward, while also my understanding of the messages in these stories has deepened.

images are from pixabay.com

In some sense we are all of us always at a crossroads; which path stretching out before us shall we choose today?  Sometimes these choices become more meaningful as we seek to advance in our lives overall.  

So please, if you like, try this one on for yourself. The right panel Better Endings Story Seed prompt encourages you to contemplate or engage with this technique in your own journal.

Travel Preparations–the Big Move

Travel, especially for relocation or a Big Move, can be an act of Life Transformation.  It lifts you out from whatever conditions have become routinized and familiar, offering new potentials for adventure and change. Because this is such a momentous occasion, a successful Big Move is deserving and requires major preparations. Preparations allow time for envisioning the adventure or the new life conditions you aim to manifest, so the more you prepare, the better for all your future prospects!

This past two weeks I have been preparing my house in Colorado to go on the market tomorrow as I will be relocating Back East at the end of July. “Staging” has been a major undertaking. New bathroom sinks, some new furniture for my next location, basically gutting and tilling the back yard, steam cleaning carpets, and cleaning and polishing/ renewing all interior surfaces as with a fine toothed comb, every nook and cranny.  It has been like digging myself out from the comfortable, cluttered space I have created as my haven this past twelve or so years.

The process of returning my house to its pristine state in preparation for its own new occupants has allowed me to gradually come to better awareness of the reality that I am already now all but retired (officially June 30) and that I truly will be moving to a new location altogether. I will be two and a half hours from one dear sister and maybe six or so from another and eight from my brother and sister-in-law: much closer to family than this past nearly forty years. I return to New York state, which was foundational in my formative years; it will be nice to be able to travel as an adult to places I always wanted to explore more fully in my youth. I bring with me my dear Soul companion, Sophie (Shitzu/Yorkie) and my dear feline Soul companion, Emily.

images are from pixabay.com

I find that preparing for such a big move benefits from lots of time in contemplation and journalling. Inner preparation is just as important or perhaps even more so than the outer activity.  Moving carries such rich potentials for creating the future you choose to manifest that it is vital to check in with your feelings, thoughts, and goals. Nowadays with the internet it is so easy as well to look ahead at the place and resources to which you will be moving or traveling. This allows your imagination to soar and scout out your destination, even before you arrive.

I welcome YOUR Comments and your own Travel or Big Move Story. If you would like to Guest Blog your story, you can simply email me at lkwatts@uccs.edu.

 

“I Get It” Now…Better Endings from Listening to Your Mentors

 

For this month’s topic of how the Teacher Archetype as a persona Ally can help us to attain Better Endings in our lives, here is a suggestion for this week:

Think about how you have learned and grown from what your own finest Mentors have helped you to understand. Then also, what would you hope for those whom you love and care for to potentially learn from your own experience, too?

To light this idea, I’ll share a bit by way of example from my own experience. I have been fortunate to have had several excellent mentors in my life. Allow me to list just a few of their insights and suggestions that, in retrospect, at some point I have come to value and apply.

• “Listen!” : When I first went to Zuni Pueblo some 31 years ago (I was back there this past weekend!), I was told by the Tribal Council members to seek out a particular man (now deceased, so I will not use his name here) about my dissertation project. This amazing man was a mentor for me with respect to that project and life generally. He advised me not to come to Zuni with a head full of questions based on theories of what I thought I needed to “study.” Rather I should LISTEN with an open heart and mind; “They will know what they are supposed to tell you,” he said. Also, he said, “Never forget that it is about PEOPLE (not ideas or things or theories).” I get it now; he was so right. Only by suspending my own preconceived ideas was I able over time to HEAR a very different set of perspectives on the topic I did interview people about and eventually published about, hopefully with their sake in view. And that remains my approach to collaborative projects today. I share this advice with students in my own classes, and I encourage them as well to “pass it forward.”

• “You see yourself in others”: This old adage passed to me from my Father has often served as a good reminder to take full responsibility for my own attitudes instead of foisting them onto others. It reminds me that others may sometimes unconsciously project their own attitudes or values onto me. This helps me to forgive and at the same time not to ‘own’ what is not mine nor to react to that which is projected.

• “You must learn to trust yourself with another” : I have learned over forty some years since receiving this advice from a beloved friend that this line helps me to apply ‘right discernment’ in my life regarding relationships of all sorts.  I have learned that with this IDEAL in mind I must weigh the degree to which—or the level at which–I ‘should’ in fact trust another. Not everyone requires or perhaps is ‘worthy’ of or desirous of that level of connection. But those that ARE/DO are GOLDEN.  I am so grateful for the true friends I have connected with deeply, and I know this level of trust comes with equal reciprocity. I wish this for all to discover!

“There is God!”: This is from a story a beloved professor-mentor once share with me, from a story about her interaction with her son. Taking him to a park one day, she picked up an Acorn and showed it to him. THERE IS GOD!, she uttered. However her son might remember this insight, I myself shall never forget it! This mentor, Toni Paterson, a philosopher, had only oak furniture in her home, from Salvation Armie stores. The Oak was her unifying symbol.

images from pixabay.com

So that’s where this reflection about my own Life Lessons from just a few of the dearest mentors in my life takes me to initially.  I will continue to journal this week about my Mentors’ good advice that has indeed led to many of my own ‘better ending’ experiences.

I encourage you to journal about and/or contemplate about your Mentors, too! As always I will welcome your Comments and stories!

 

Listening to Your-SELVES: A Balancing Act

Welcome to Prompts Day at Better Endings. On Tuesdays we entertain a list of topics for applying the principle of Better Endings to a weekly theme; this week, Attitudes. Some speak of a “Law of Attitudes,” which makes sense to me. Our attitudes to a large extent determine our experience. Attitudes reflect and can establish “mindsets,” which act like filters between our minds or hearts and the “reality” we are able to perceive.

Let’s consider especially opposing, paired attitudes this week. These are polar-opposite perspectives that frame very different outlooks on the same event or situation. Here’s a list of some paired-opposite attitudes for you to consider and add to:

optimistic            pessimistic

open            closed

impatience            contentment

       insecurity            self-confidence

   belief            cynicism

expansive            narrow

kindness            meanness

acceptance           rejection

constructive            destructive

respectful            demeaning

gratitude            conceit

Can you recognize within yourself BOTH poles of one or more of the above pairs of opposing attitudes with regard to some situation or enduring conflict in your life? I invite you to choose that sort of opposition to explore. Consider a subject that you can “look at” from either of a very opposite pair of perspectives. Allow yourself the space to feel-think-Be first in one attitude, and then shift grounds to the polar-opposite attitude about that same subject and feel-think-Be in that attitude instead for a while. What do you pay most attention to, in each perspective? What appears more important, and less important, depending on your outlook? What about the subject itself motivates you to shift more to one or the other side of the polarity?

Recognizing duality or bipolarity in ourselves, especially around ideas or situations we feel conflicted about, is natural for everyone, sometimes. From an archetypal psychological viewpoint, situations that evoke conflicting attitudes can expose to us ‘parts’ of ourselves that are worth listening to and exploring–in moderation–because we may tend to suppress some ‘sides’ of ourself at the expense of a whole, balanced, integrated outlook. Allowing an attitude you normally suppress to express itself while you are there to pay attention to it can help you to get to the root of some issues you might otherwise be denying or seeing only from a self-limiting perspective. These ‘buried’ attitudes can help you to troubleshoot a stubborn point of view in order to develop some more balanced and creative solutions!

For today,simply choose one or more of the above attitude-pairs–or use another–that represents a set of opposing attitudes you sometimes hold about some situation or subject in your life. Let both sides have their say, either through journalling from each perspective, or engaging in an imaginative internal ‘listening session’ to both sides, one at a time. The only guideline is that each side gets to have its say without judgement or interruption. Then, try looking at the situation again, AFTER clearly expressing both of your opposed attitudes.

Does a creative solution or a deeper understanding of the situation light up for you?

Tell us about it (if you’d like). If you wish you can submit your story or journalling practice as a Story of the Week (If I receive more than one, I’ll probably blog them all!) And always, I welcome your insights and Comments!

Better Endings to You!  – Linda