The following post is designed to be the starting point of a discussion on this topic. Please don’t see my initial rant as the be-all/end-all of this topic
I have had some shitty things go on in my life. Some of them happened to me.
Some of them I perpetrated.
All of them, in the series of cascading events that make up my life, have led me to where I am now.
As anyone who knows me or Bonnie is well aware, I love where I am right now… I’m married to my best friend (someone you people would likely kill to spend as much time with as I get without even trying). I work and make a living in the entertainment industry (and most days I don’t even have to put on pants when I’m working).
People who have heard me talk about the mess that is my past (those things I’m willing to share) often ask, incredulous, how I even survived the mental and emotional trauma that was my life.
I was going to do a video or an audio for this course, but when I tried, I felt like I was just being a dick about everything, so I’m sticking with text.
You all know stories of people who have accidents, get all mangled, and years later are happy and laughing and saying how the accident was the best thing that ever happened to them… then they list a lot of things that were consequential of the accident… renewed focus on what was important, surrendering to the inevitable, an almost forced closeness with family and friends… crap like that.
People often have crap happen to them, and in an attempt to give them some perspective, I will tell the story of the trail of events that led me to meeting Bonnie (“The Luckiest Man in the World” story for those who know it), and how that series of events got me to where I am.
Here’s a little industry secret… you know how “they” tell you that you need to have a comedic and a dramatic monologue that you can deliver when you’re in auditions or meetings or whatever? Well, the story of how I met Bonnie is both my comedic and dramatic monologues because it tells really well both ways. Maybe you can develop a personal monologue that will do the same thing… much less shit to memorize.
Anyway, I can tell this story in a fun/funny way to people who need to have their hearts lifted, but I can also tell the story in a really dark version for people who think their lives are over… and I’m like, “Really? What fucked up shit in your life do you have that even remotely compares to the shit I lived through???”
And the truth is that people, for the absolute most part, have not come close to the crap I lived through.
Refer back to the stories of other people’s trauma. When they get past it, they gain perspective on things.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a tool that allowed you to apply future perspective to a really crappy, stressful situation that you’re experiencing right now, today…? Wouldn’t you love to have a mantra that you could lean on when you’re feeling like you can’t take this shit anymore… whatever “this shit” is?
Well, the lesson I learned in the midst of going through the trauma in my life that eventually led me to the life I have now is, I believe, just such a mantra, just such a tool.
I learned the power of… grace… in my immediate life.
It’s weird, I know. You can say it. We all know that’s weird.
But that doesn’t stop it from being true.
Here’s the tool. Here’s the mantra. Here’s what will lighten your life.
“There are no such things as ‘good’ things or ‘bad’ things that happen to you in life. There are just things that happen and the grace with which you deal with them.”
Grace is sort of a detachment based on a different, enlightened point of view. It’s like the future perspective thing. Grace is a function of knowing you’ll get through this thing, knowing that life is a series of events, not a series of discreet, separated things. Grace is saying — when you’re in the middle of some shit — “This is going to be a great story someday.”
If it’s going to be a great story someday, please come to understand it as a great story right now.
Learn to strengthen the muscle of responding to things in a grace-filled way.
It will lighten your life in ways — I swear — you cannot imagine.
Filling your life with in-the-moment, grace-filled choices… about everything… will really rock your world.
It rocked (and continues to rock) mine.