Keeping It Real

We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.

I loves me a ceremony. A ritual for a formal occasion is the description in the dictionary. You are one person one minute, you go through a ceremony or ritual and suddenly you are someone else entirely. One day a cadet, the next a soldier.  A woman becomes a wife, a man a husband. A high school student gets a piece of paper turning them into a college student, a college student gets a piece of paper saying you are now ready to go out into the world and prosper. (If you are lucky.) A baptism starts your life with religion and hopefully spirituality. A funeral gives your loved ones closure to celebrate life and move on. All of these ceremonies are important to us and represent very real and meaningful times in all of our lives. They also make us immediately conjure up images in our minds of what they are supposed to look like. What life ‘should’ be after we go through with these rituals.

A few weeks ago I was given the privilege to attend my friend’s son’s wedding.

Who doesn’t love a wedding? Glowing happy people who are on the threshold of life together. They entered that church two separate people from two separate families and left united together as one. It was a beautiful day filled with loving sentiments from the priest who was a family friend to the toasts and speeches from their loved ones who were getting an opportunity to tell them what they really mean to them. (Which was the world.)

A week later we were at my son’s graduation. I sat there listening to the amazing keynote speaker they had, an alum who went on to be a Hollywood producer and screenwriter. He was down to earth and funny and he had a very important thing in common with all of the people there. Yes, he was a graduate of the school and since he was youngish some of the same faculty were still there when he attended. But he was a storyteller by trade and he narrated his story well. He related to all of us, not just the students but also everyone there by being his honest and authentic, REAL self while he told his tale. And I realized the reason why I love a ceremony is not because we get to dress up and drink champagne, (Bonus!) but because I am fascinated by the human experience. I love to hear a personal story. I even actually enjoy a funeral because I can’t wait to hear the eulogy. I love to laugh when I am sad and cry when I am happy. It’s all about the REAL story.

The only thing we have to watch out for is the ‘shoulds’. So many people say, “Well, now I graduated. I ‘should’ have it all figured out by now.” Or, “Now that we are married this is what I thought my spouse ‘should’ be like, or how I ‘should’ be in this role.” “The funeral was months ago, I ‘should’ be over it by now.”

The “when I have’s” and the “should’s” are risky business. We all have an archetype in our head of what it looks like when you go through a ritual and are standing on the other side a completely different person. What a gift we would give ourselves if we just threw the old images away and lived life presently and enjoyed/accepted what was.

So many people become co-dependant out of fear. Your happiness (and unless you are a special needs person, your very survival) cannot be dependant on what someone else is or is not doing.

When my daughter left for her trip abroad I gave her a journal that said on the cover, “He said he would give her the world, and she said thank you but she had her own.”  I love that! I am all for being independent. Do your own thing, find your passion and follow your own dreams and don’t mold them into fitting what you think it should be. But enjoy what it actually is. (I am learning this as I go myself, fly by the seat of my pants kind of thing.)

 That being said, at some point we are going to want to share our lives with other human beings. It’s just the way our souls roll. Now what can we do to find balance between being co-dependant and being independent? Maybe the new archetype we can train the future generations to have in their heads is one of inter-dependance. A true relationship where you are authentically you. Then when you are your REAL self and you allow someone else to be his or her REAL selves you are living in your truth.  So many of us are programmed to listen to the ‘shoulds’ that we don’t even know who or what our real self is or what it wants. Get quiet and listen. The whispers are telling you. I have often said on this blog and to my children, ‘Jiminy Cricket!’ They know from years of Disney, (Talk about creating false archetypes, thanks for the Princess fairy tale, not to mention making the very word stepmother sound

ee-ville Walt.) But from those two words my kids know when I say that it means, “Always let your conscience be your guide.”  Jiminy tried to tell Pinocchio. Listen to the voice in your head. That is your soul talking. Your soul is who you REALLY are. All this other stuff is smoke and mirrors. Life is ever evolving. A ceremony or a ritual is a wonderful way of celebrating hard work, life, marriage and even death. Don’t let a ceremony give you the ‘shoulds’. Live your life presently, be true to yourself and the people you love, live honestly and be REAL.