The other day someone asked me how I see their life. I found this a difficult question to answer. How I see their life is about me and has nothing to do with them. How I write my story is about me and would most likely be very different from how others would write the story of my life. Why? Simple, it is all about perspective. I would write the story of my life based on who I am at this very point in time and the perspective I have of my own life. Come back in 5 minutes or 5 years and the way I tell my story may be quite different. Why? This is because I may or may not have the same perspective. If I change what I believe about myself then how I describe myself and the story I tell about my life changes. To paraphrase something Alice Walker once wrote, I am never the same person twice. Even in the time I am writing this entry in my journal, I have changed. The cells in my body have changed. I am physically not the same person I was one character or space ago. If I can stay mindful that my body is ever evolving, then I can also be mindful that the rest of me is ever evolving as well.
When I think back over my life, I can see how what I believe about myself has changed. I can also see how the way I have told the story of my life has changed. Why? It is all about perspective. When I change my point of view about myself, then everything else aligns itself with my new belief system. Every time I stop lying to myself about something, the story takes on a new direction. A Christian scripture (Matthew 7:3-5) reminds us to pull the specks out of our own eyes before we attempt to pull them out of others eyes. For me, those specks are the lies I agreed to internalize. Once I pull that speck out of my belief system, my perspective of myself changes. Not only do I remove the lie from my own belief system, but it has also allowed me to stop using that lie in my perspective of others.
Every time I remove a lie from my belief system, my whole perspective of life changes. The removal of each lie gives me a new vision, a new set of lenses through which to view the world. There is a story in Christian writings about this man who was blind. Jesus had to treat him multiple times before his vision was restored. I am coming to understand this story in my own life. There have been times when I did not even realize I was lying to myself and others, or the extent to which I was doing so. Once removed one of the lies from my belief system, my vision changed and became clearer. At the same time, I came to realize that the lie I had just removed had only restored part of my vision and there were more lies to be removed. With the removal of each one, my understanding of myself, my compassion for others and my perspective on life is continuously changing.
When I think about my life as a book, I come to realize it is the never-ending and ever evolving story. It is one, which I am continuously writing and revising as I go. Characters will come and go and move in and out of their position as main characters in my story. Their movement in the story line of my life has nothing to do with them. It is about my ever-evolving perspective and my ever-increasing clarity of vision as I pull those lies out of my belief system.
Where do I go from here? Time will tell. What I do know is that it is all about the journey and a never-ending and ever evolving perspective.