Tuesday 5 January 2021: Cinema Paradiso & Stories
Cinema Paradiso
I’m on a film diet for the new year. I’m down to a mid-week movie and only on weekends. So I read a couple of chapters, as part of the required reading for January, for the MMTCP course I am soon to finish. Two years goes by quickly and now I have to start getting my style of teaching out there.
Yesterday I listened to a talk by Jonathon Faust, Tara Brach’s husband on how he shares his expertise and I felt inspired. Then that feeling like a drug begins to dissipate and dissolve and I feel like a need another motivational talk to get me going again. However, things in general are beginning to brighten up. There’s a sense of presence and doing what feels right, even if it’s a little risky and moving out of my comfort zone. There’s a willingness to let go of the past though it feels like there is so much of myself invested in the telling of my tales of joy and sorrow. Although mostly it seems like a story of woe, being the holy fool rather than the hero I have become aware of my own ignorance and in that knowledge have achieved through experience some degree of of consciousness and, dare I say it, wisdom.
Being the fool, like in Shakespeare’s King Lear, rather than thinking of myself as the fountain of wisdom rather than folly, means I can hold things, including myself, more lightheartedly. Nor do I feel as much, the need to fix everything and everybody, which only led to an unhealthy co-dependency; by not being able to shoulder or let go of the burden of others and live life my own way without feeling guilty or ashamed. The anxious-avoidant wants to be loved and letting others down I would be ostracised and left feeling lonely and isolated from my family and community:
‘You wouldn’t try to get me back?’ my mother asked my father.
‘No! Not if you let me down like that, or any woman for that matter.’
That’s often how I’ve felt, which has held me back from following my own path in life. The fear of unforgiveness and no real understanding that my intentions are honourable not egotistical, or seeking success and fame or someone to blame. However, sharing the fears and secret anxieties of the society I live in where gossipers and not government are often the greatest form of tyranny, requires voice and vision to end the silence of submission and resignation for the sake of what?
Conforming for the sake of a fallacy of how we’re supposed to be as an individual, within a family, within a community, within a society, within a socio-economic system that is harming our environment and thus serves no one in the end.
Perhaps it is time to begin to risk ostracism to change how our stories will inevitably if we don’t challenge this corrupt and corrupting way of being. In the words of Krishnamurti; it serves no one to be a well-adjusted member of a sick society.
“Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,” as Mr Scrooge said, “I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore,” my three wishes for us all are:
May we be happy,
May we be healthy
May we be peaceful
Like Scrooge I’d like to become as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, in the good old world. Some people may laugh to see the alteration in me, but let them laugh, and little heede them; for I am was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, I think it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. My own heart laughs: and that is quite enough for me.
Like Scrooge I hope I’ll have no further intercourse with Spirits, but live upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possesses the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One! And may this year be a happy, healthy and peaceful one.
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it. The eBook is available online at www.gutenberg.org
