Letting Go of the Script

Change is never easy. And yet, many of us had to change our lives, adjust our attitudes, and push away from this strange year of 2020.

My story has been mentioned several times in the Reflections section of my web site called “Standing in Balance”. What has carried me through into 2021 is me reminding myself again and again that I’ve lived through tough times before. I am doing well now and learning how to roll with the punches, or, as I also call it, “keeping my knees loose.” I coined that term when I took the class, Improvisational Performing. In Patricia Ryan Madison’s book, “Improv Wisdom”, she details seven attributes which bear a resemblance to the writings of Angeles Arrien in her ‘The Four-Fold Way” and Don Miguel Ruiz in “The Four Agreements.”

See how you fit into these teachings:

• Just Say Yes – To life, to living, to being, to doing, to loving

• Don’t Prepare – This is about trusting that we have figured out our core beliefs and what gives us strength. We can’t prepare for every eventuality, but by trusting ourselves we can stay loose, rather than shutting down or armoring up.

• Just Show Up – Be present for whatever is happening. Be in the moment and then this one and then this one ……

• Start Anywhere – For instance, to clean a room or our life, we can begin at the point wherever we find ourselves. Any task can be a beginning.

• Be Average – I, we, do not need to be larger than life. I, WE, ARE LIFE. We do not have to become bigger than everyone and everything else. This only causes us to lose connection into the flow of what is really happening.

• Pay Attention – Oh how easily our attention can be distracted by anything: the patterns of light and shadow on the kitchen counter, the news, Sudoku, old movies, drugs, alcohol, a pretty/handsome face, computer games, and on and on. Some distractions are temporary. Some become all-consuming. Then that precious connection to life becomes frayed and thin and can disintegrate.

• Face the Facts – This is the hardest for me to embrace. Yet, how else can I do the above teachings if I am not aware of my age, my body, the setting and time in which I live, my limitations and my gifts. Facing facts helps us understand the challenges that are all around and know the specialness that we each bring to this stage of life in our society.