Secrets

Today it is all about secrets. The things we keep from others, the things others keep from us.  Are the hurtful or helpful? I guess that depends on your perspective. There is so much duplicity and lies when secrets are involved.  So much drama and chaos, which as writers we know is critical to a good storyline.

But why is that? Why is it that we want to watch, see, feel the pain or joy in someone else's drama in a movie or book, but run a mile when it is our own.  For some it is self created from an addiction or fear for others something they have no interest in at all.

Do we want to learn from a distance so we will know how to handle it in our own lives? Is it a test run to check out our coping mechanisms? Or is it conditioning? For so many years we avoid anything that could open that door, that it is only now safe to open someone else's door?

For others it is a trigger and as long as it is handled well, I guess that is a good thing. I think the trick is in knowing how you feel about them in general before you are faced with the situation. If you live a secret life, you are no doubt more aware of their existence, impact and cost. If you live a life without them, you are pretty much shell shocked at their revelation.

Like a good story, there is more than one side. I guess it is the same with secrets, they only exist if there is some one keeping the secret and someone not being told. Take away either and the secret has no power. I guess that is all it really comes down to - in our society information is power, it gives us choices and currencies. If we do something one way or the other to influence our own choices, so be it. But if we do something that unfairly influences someone else or removes their choices, not so good.

If there is one good thing about all of this technology, secrets are harder to keep. This generation wants to be much freer and open, unlike the ones that came before. Surely that is a good thing? I would agree, as long as we can keep them in our stories, for fun and interest.

The Power of Dreams

While this isn't my dream, it is someone else's and I am learning how important it is to recognize and appreciate that.  Someone has taken the time, the energy to get their thoughts down just perfectly. This particular format is a picture, but isnt that also what we do with our words? 

We find a way to put thoughts and make them into things, and search for the ultimate perfection in matching what we create to what was created inside of us.  When the outside matches the inside.  Yet why does it seem so foreign when someone says those very things apply to our physical and emotional lives?

Why is it we can see and value these things in others and what they create, but are too afraid to see in ourselves? As children we are taught that playing, dreaming etc., is ok up until a certain age. It doesnt matter at what age it should change, the knowing that this is no longer acceptable has been presented and is now a part of us. Is this when we shut down our instincts in a more tangible way? Because we know or have been told that what comes naturally is wrong and it will affect how others view and accept us.

Fast forward a few years when we are in high school and we are then told we should once again turn on that tap we were forced to close, and in record time. To figure out who we are, what we want to do with our lives, who we want to be, so we can choose a career path?

Some, the lucky ones, never stopped dreaming or perhaps more correctly, found a way to incorporate them into their every day lives and that of their surroundings in acceptable ways, so they never lost course. Never lost their balance, their purpose.  Yet so many others don't and try to reconnect on a timetable that somehow never completely happens. So they continue to search.

Some search for what they are looking for in people, others in places and others in things.  Then there is another group who refuse to search and instead try the obliteration route. Trying to block everything they knew while trying to remember what they had been taught to forget.

Slowly, if we are lucky, those pieces of ourselves come back to us. Sometimes by accident others because we are somehow living in synchronisity and it supports us and propels us forward. Other times it is love that brings us to this place.  The type of love that is our foundation, that grounds us to be ourselves again and release the judgements and fears of old so we can hear and embrace the voices we silenced so long ago.

It doesnt matter at what age this happens, as long as it happens. We can have as many dreams as we want, there are no limits other than ourselves. As adults nobody can get in your way, not of the things that really matter to you.  The more you come back to yourself, the more power you will have in your inside world and your outside world.  Yes, it may be a matter of perception, but isnt that basically what our dreams are about? Our own perceptions of what we want in our world? The people and experiences we want to meet, be and share? What our goals are based on and our successes achieved from?

No matter where you are in your life, you still have a choice. To free yourself to the power of your dreams however they present themselves or to remain hidden in fear until your days are done? They say the worst regret is those things unsaid after someone has gone. I hazard to guess if words are that powerful, what a life unlived would feel like in those last moments. I know that I for one, never want to feel that way and in fact, don't want to feel that way for any longer.

I know my characters don't either. Time to free both myself and them, just not sure what happens first. Or is that part of the synchronisity in life, the ying and the yang, the black the white, every reaction having and equal and opposite reaction? Life really is perfect, if you let it be.