?my light will shine when all else fade.

Friday, April 04, 2008

You know how on those cartoons, sometimes you always see Tom start to run after Jerry and then pause for a moment, only to see a "Devil Tom" appear on his right shoulder and an "Angel Tom" appear on his left?

The "Devil" is saying, "Hey Buddy, go chase after that mouse. He looks mighty tasty. You know you want to, go do it!"

While the "Angel" is saying, "Don’t do that, Tom! Jerry has never done anything horrible to you, and you guys should be friends, not enemies."

As fanciful as those cartoons are, that depiction has been pretty true to life when it comes to how my thought process runs when I hit a bump on the road that I have (or haven’t) seen before.

I start battling back and forth between two voices of reason in my head. There is a part of ethical logic that reaches me, and I kind of acknowledge the fact that the positive "Angel" is probably the one that I should be paying the most attention to. Yet no matter how hard I try to fully shut her up, the "Devil" on my shoulder keeps talking. Keeps reminding me of all those negative thoughts, all those negative energy, and all those horrible memories that I have in the past, or not measuring up to what I wanted, or what I thought others wanted (another terrible thing that I must admit, I have allowed myself to be influenced by in the thoughts and opinions of others).

My favorite quote from one of my all-time favorite movie (Pretty Woman) is when Julia Roberts’ character is lying in bed with Richard Gere’s and they are facing each other. He starts to compliment her, and tell her how much potential she has in herself, and how she could be so much more than just a prostitute.

Her response is, "Somehow the bad stuff is always easier to believe. Have you ever noticed that?"

Yes, I have. Throughout my life, no matter how much I know that I will come out stronger and with more determination out of any obstacle - though at the beginning, the mean stuff, the negative energy, and the negative thoughts always seem to be the easier ones to believe. Why is it so hard to truly believe that there is good in the world and that good can come to you?

I have been told by so many teachers in my life, from grade school up until now in college, that you are what you think you are. "If you think you can do it, then you can do it." I always used to just brush it off. Psh, they are dorky teachers - what do they know?

And then as I got older, I realized that mindset played a huge part in my ability to see the true scope of things. The more negative life seemed, and I allowed it to seem that way, the more negative things had happened. The moment I started to smile or shine a light on the more positive things in my life, nothing just miraculously got cured or changed - but I was able to deal with the crap in my life with less strife and less anger.

This is way easier said than done, folks. Don’t think I am sitting here claiming that I have all the answers, for I have not. And I know there is so much of life out there for me to grab with my two bare hands and grip with all my might. To really taste, touch, see, and smell every single thing that this universe has to offer me. But even still, I have my dark days, and even still, that "Devil" seems to appear on my shoulder every time.

So I decided that I shouldn’t let fear guide me. Essentially, I realized, that’s all the "Devil" represents. An inner fear that stems from a past memory, a present thought, a futuristic notion that something might become a catastrophe and then where would I be? Well, I’d still be alive. And that’s really all that counts in the end, right? Because in the end, I don’t get to take my resume printed on nice stationary into the grave - it won’t matter that I always got good grades in Algebra or whether I was my boss’ favorite. It won’t matter what I wore or didn’t wear. And it certainly won’t matter what jobs I ever held.

That’s why I started my fresh start with a single piece of paper towel. Any kind would do. Didn’t have to be Bounty or the cheap Target kind. It didn’t have to have the puffy "extra-absorbant" squares. Just one single piece of paper towel.

And then I grabbed a pen and began to write every single negative thought I could possibly think of. (Believe me, I wrote small.) Anything that was holding me back. All the obstacles that I could possibly think of in achieving my ultimate goal.

I wrote it ALL down. Every single thing that I could think of that ever passed through the deepest cavities and the neurons on my brain and tried to infest it with negativity.

There were tears. A lot of the words got blotched out. But they weren’t meant to be read clearly - it was simply the act of writing them all down and trying to rid myself of all the negativity in my life.

The final act:
I walked into my bathroom, and stepped to the "Magnificent Negativity Disposal Machine" (otherwise known as the toilet) and dropped that paper towel right in there. (Now I know they say you shouldn’t throw paper towel down there or you’ll clog it, but it just so happen that I have a very, very strong flusher!)

Then I pulled the latch and watched all the negative energy flush itself down the toilet bowl.

As I walked away, that "Devil" was cussing up a storm on my shoulder while the "Angel" was standing triumphantly. So I just ’flicked’ the "Devil" away, and gave a ’pat’ to my guardian "Angel".

SMILE...you're with me!