My dad and I have been watching the Star Wars movies in chronological order this week. What I love about it is the focus on “The Force” which, to me, is a fairly accurate representation of how all life is created, how things manifest, and how it is all connected.
It makes me chuckle that so many of the characters in the movie (and people watching it) think of it The Force as a fictional or imaginary thing only.
What I also love about the movies is that the battles never seem truly over. It’s a great reminder that — on this physical plane — we are never really done. Good never truly “wins” over bad because they are two sides of the same coin, which is continually flipping over and over; where one story ends another begins.
With each spin of the coin, each new chapter, each new book, perhaps we learn more. However, as I learn more, I also discover that what I don’t know becomes clearer, vaster, and seems infinite. Feeling into “the force”/my intuition/center of peace/heart center/divine consciousness perhaps seems to me a very sensible way to navigate life.
Regardless of what one believes, when meditating and contemplating from a point of stillness, it is quite simply far easier to reach good, solid decisions than it is when I act in anger, fear or resentment, or some other form of unhelpful emotion.
So much of life is reflected in movies, good and bad. The weather here in New Zealand has been so bad this week that another movie we watched was the new one starring Tom Hanks, A Man Called Otto, which was an excellent portrayal of the good and bad in ordinary life.
One octogenarian’s review I thought was rather poignant “I can be a curmudgeon, not an intentional one but one worn down by constant change and a slipping away of one’s past. Life’s successes and tragedies form us all if we make the distance and Tom Hanks showed how a once young man in love can change into an Otto today”.
I really resonated with his comment that “the drab setting and snow were brightened by the one thing we are all craving — kindness”.
Yes, I see, hear, and sense meaning in everything. Some people say I overanalyze, but I am happy to trust that I will probably never know the vast majority of meanings. Life has presented me with enough information though, many times over, to know that the things that eventually come together in my life are most often a series of an unexplained, unpredicted chain of events that leads me to trust in following my intuition, major or minor.
Just today I was driving to a garden center and, as I passed by another one on the way, I felt an intuitive tug towards it but carried on with my original plan as the one I was passing is often really busy. A few miles down the road I hit traffic and, after the queue not moving for some time, turned around and went back to the one I had passed.
Because it was so rainy, the place was actually pretty empty, so we ate a delicious lunch (the cafe had a much better variety of food than the one we had been heading for) and I got the two houseplants I was after with ease (after thinking the other garden center would be better stocked).
I could have sat there in that queue of traffic for another ten minutes, or longer, but instead, I decided to go with the flow, and follow my intuition back to the other garden center; and I’m really glad I did. I know it’s a benign example, but there are so many of these every day.
I suspect there are many examples of where we talk ourselves into things or out of things, which start then become harder and harder because they are bucking our flow. Like Tom Hanks as Otto trying to commit suicide three times, each attempt foiled by unsuspecting neighbors who give him an opportunity to live his last weeks/months on Earth embracing life and feeling more completion, in the bosom of kind neighbors and warm friendships, before naturally passing on.
In particular, his neighbor Marisol makes a huge impression on him. In a life where he sees so many things are “idiotic” and so many people acting like “idiots”, Marisol is persistent, relentlessly kind, and unexpectedly emotionally honest, forcing him to take a hard look at how he is acting.
I can’t help but feel we make life hard for ourselves by so often “trying to do the right thing” rather than feeling what is right for us at that moment. More and more I embrace the saying my gran repeated many times “what’s for you won’t go by you”, more and more I trust in that Force, flow, and serendipitous moment.
Where in your life can you see examples of this? What are your intuitive nudges telling you? Is it time to leverage the astonishing power of your intuition, flow, and kindness (towards yourself as much as others)? May we all be a Marisol and have a Marisol in our lives, and may The Force be felt by all.
