It's Time For My Truth

Wow.

2020.

What a ride.

Many continue to speak of it as the worst thing that ever happened to us.

I see it as a necessary heart-opening experience.

Humanity has been plodding along in a zombie fog for decades...maybe centuries...possibly even millenia. It kind of just depends on your perspective.

And perspective is everything. EVERYTHING. If you haven't learned that yet, that might be where you want to start on your internal work. And if you haven't yet started on your internal work, now might be the time.

Back when I was a screenwriter, I used to say, "When 500 people are sitting in a theater watching a movie, they were watching 500 different movies." Why? Because they each brought their own biases, experiences, likes, dislikes, preferences, distractions. And when you walk out and talk about it, chances are, what stuck out for one, another didn't even notice. The part one person loved the most sent repulsion through the other. "Can you believe that guy didn't realize what she really meant?" you might ask. "What guy?" the other person might respond.

And it's as true in life as it is in the movies. I have two sisters from the same two parents. We were from the same family every day of our lives until we were 7, 8 and 10 when our parents got divorced (it got messy after that, but I'll just leave it there for now.) We're now 56, 57 and 59. If you were to ask us all about a particular moment in time, we would each have three different stories around it. Which doesn't mean any one of us is lying or making things up. We just perceived it through our own lenses.

It's one of the most challenging things for any human to acknowledge and internalize, I've noticed. People cling to their perspective in every thought, memory or conversation. They'll dig in, sometimes escalating their voices and heart rates as they try to convince another of their "Truth."

But what about this: Envision a 5-year-old human. To a mouse, that kid is gargantuan. He can't even see the top to see if he has eyes or not. He just knows he's HUGE and potentially dangerous. To a bear, he's just trying to decide if the fight would be worth the meal or not. He's almost of no consequence, except as a potential food source. Definitely not a threat.

Which one of them is wrong? The bear? Or the mouse?

Neither, right? It's all perspective.

Life as a human is multi-sensory. It's multi-dimensional. Multi-layered. We're each born as this tiny, dependent human who begins to soak up the messages of the adults around us: our parents, neighbors, other family members, teachers, clergy, friends of friends and parents of friends. And books and television and games and the internet. We begin to build our perception of our Truth which is unique to us. Not a single other human on the planet has had our same experiences.

Why, then, is it so hard to realize that our perspective is ours? Someone else's is theirs. And they may be different. And they may both be right.

The human species has f*cked up whatever this experiment is. But it isn't too late. 2020 rocked every aspect of my life - body, mind, spirit and heart. I've significantly shifted in each one of those aspects of my life. And I have a lot to say about it. I hope you'll stay tuned. Thanks.