When we were young, bedtime stories\u00a0were a treat. They piqued our imaginations, they filled us with wonder and they\u00a0kept us entertained. They took us on journeys into fantasy worlds and exploded
in our dreams.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I was six and I learned to\u00a0read, my mother took me to the library and I read every book in the children\u2019s\u00a0section. Twice. I loved stories and I lived them through my favorite books: \u201cThe\u00a0Secret Garden,\u201d \u201cCharlotte\u2019s Web,\u201d \u201cThe Twelve Dancing Princesses\u201d and of\u00a0course, \u201cAlice in Wonderland.\u201d Reading them made me feel alive and adventurous.When my parents turned out the lights at night, I repeated the stories back to\u00a0myself. They had happy endings and they were still with me when I woke up in\u00a0the morning.<\/p>\n
As grownups, we still tell\u00a0ourselves stories but they almost never have happy endings. What happened?\u00a0Where did the good ones go and why did the bad ones take their place? They\u00a0aren\u2019t magical. They aren\u2019t creative. They don\u2019t lull us to sleep or make us\u00a0feel safe. They scare us and make us want to take Xanax. It takes a lot of
awareness and courage to rise above them and stop repeating them over and over\u00a0in our minds.<\/p>\n
Making up bad\u00a0stories about our lives seems to be a universal problem. We are conditioned to imagine\u00a0worst case scenarios. I was taught to not trust the good case scenarios. When I\u00a0wanted something good to happen, my mother said, \u201cDon\u2019t get your hopes up. You\u00a0might get disappointed.\u201d She didn\u2019t mean to make me feel badly. She had been\u00a0programmed to expect the worst but that belief system is already the worst.<\/p>\n
We have to\u00a0choose. We can drown in the darkness and imagine the bad stuff or we can\u00a0challenge ourselves to stay aware and imagine the good stuff. It takes energy and\u00a0commitment to stay in that moment and stop scaring ourselves. I walk three\u00a0times a week with a close friend, Michael. We love to walk and we love being\u00a0together but we found ourselves falling into a bad habit. We were making up
stories about the people around us that were not complimentary and we were\u00a0exhausted by the end of the walk. Michael went on a trip and when he got back, he\u00a0told me about it while we walked. He\u2019d had a great time and we laughed and felt\u00a0lighthearted. People along the way smiled at us as if our good moods were\u00a0contagious. When we finished the walk, we felt so energized and happy, Michael\u00a0said, \u201cLet\u2019s make a pact to stop making up bad stories. We don\u2019t know these\u00a0people or what their lives are like so let\u2019s find something good about them.\u201d We\u00a0shook on it and I\u2019m working on keeping that pact.<\/p>\n
In these days of\u00a0challenging politics (I\u2019m being kind), convincing yourself that all is fine\u00a0isn\u2019t necessarily true. But convincing yourself that we\u2019re doomed isn\u2019t\u00a0necessarily true either. One truth remains. We might as well stop telling ourselves\u00a0stories, bad or good ones, and stay in the moment. We just never know what\u2019s\u00a0going to happen.<\/p>\n
A friend,\u00a0Bethany, sent me a quote by Ram Dass that helps me stay on purpose. I\u2019ve\u00a0written this in my blog before but it deserves a repeat. And a repeat. And a\u00a0repeat.<\/p>\n
Ram Dass said;
\u201cWhether I\u2019m in the Golden Age or the Apocalypse, my work is the same:<\/p>\n
Quiet my mind.<\/p>\n
Open my heart.<\/p>\n
Relieve suffering
wherever I find it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cHealer, Heal Thyself,\u201d is a great wisdom. Relieving your own suffering is as important as relieving someone else\u2019s, so it all starts with you and what you tell yourself. It takes discipline and strength to catch yourself in the middle of a bad story and change it. I try, but when I can\u2019t stop obsessing over something that\u2019s scaring me, I call a friend to help me get over the hump. \u00a0<\/p>\n
I was in Stephen\u00a0Levine\u2019s death and dying workshop when a man with AIDS stood up. \u201cMy father is\u00a0a preacher,\u201d he said, \u201cand he told me I\u2019m going to hell for being gay and\u00a0having AIDS.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephen said, \u201cThat\u00a0belief system belongs to your father. There are tons of other ones floating\u00a0around. Why not choose a belief system that makes you feel good?\u201d It\u2019s a simple\u00a0directive that\u2019s hard to carry out.<\/p>\n
I like to tell\u00a0myself the following story:<\/p>\n
A poor family had\u00a0one son. They loved him beyond measure. When he was thrown from a horse and\u00a0crippled, the family were afraid he would have a difficult life. They thought\u00a0it was such bad luck. Two weeks later, army recruiters came to the village and\u00a0took every able-bodied man to fight in the war. Many of them died. Because his
legs were broken, the young man was allowed to stay with his family. They\u00a0thought it was such good luck.<\/p>\n
Life is like\u00a0that. We call something bad. We call something good. But really, we don\u2019t know\u00a0what it is or what it will be. Sometimes we feel so broken, it seems like we can\u00a0never turn our thoughts around, but when we notice it and stick with it, we find\u00a0a way.<\/p>\n
There is a crack in everything.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how the light gets in.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 – – -Leonard Cohen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When we were young, bedtime stories\u00a0were a treat. They piqued our imaginations, they filled us with wonder and they\u00a0kept us entertained. They took us on journeys into fantasy worlds and explodedin our dreams.\u00a0 When I was six and I learned to\u00a0read, my mother took me to the library and I read every book in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2697,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions\/2697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}