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Chapter II
Creating a Personal Vision to Live
By
The eye sees what it brings to
seeing.
SHELLEY
A fifty-six-year-old man, married
with children and grandchildren, viewed himself as
a realistic, no-nonsense person, definitely not the
romantic or sentimental type. His verbal communication
tended to be gruff and blunt, delivered always without
any sugar coating. He withheld more than he shared.
If he described a person or an event as "nice",
he had given it his highest compliment. No one would
ever accuse him of being exuberant. His childhood
had been dominated by strict, sometimes abusive parents.
When they hit him or punished him, they said they
did it because they loved him. He came to hate the
word "love" and never used it, not once,
throughout his adult years. During a break in an afternoon
class, he shared with me a discovery he had made.
"I always thought love meant
pain," he said. "Maybe that's not so, Bears.
Today, I watched people in class use that word in
many ways. Unhappily. Happily. Then I realized, hey,
it's just a word. That's all. My parents gave it one
meaning, but, me, well, I could give it another. I
kept thinking, yeah, I could even get to like that
word."
When class resumed, he asked to share
his revelation with the other program participants.
Then he turned to his wife, who had attended the seminar
with him. He reached out and took her hand in an uncharacteristically
graceful and tender gesture. He smiled as his bottom
lip quivered and then, in a soft, sweet voice, said,
"I love you." Tears filled his wife's eyes.
In thirty-six years of marriage, she had never heard
him say those words.
We can change.
We can be different We can defy history. Our past
is but a memory dragged into the present moment That
moment is no more important or significant than the
next. And in the next moment we can change it all.
We do it by changing our point of view ... by changing
our beliefs, as the man above did, and the woman below.
Chapter
2 Continued »» |
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