Projections

"Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions." ~ Hafez 

We all want predictions of events before they occur. Entire industries have formed to tell us what the future holds for the stock markets, new movie releases, world events, and of course the weather. Logistics companies and similar organizations are required to not simply suggest efficiencies but anticipate the unforeseen, the unknowable. We are constantly deluged with advertising telling us the advertisers can protect us from those awful events that are surely to transpire. No wonder we live in such a negative society.

Who ever warns us about good things looming over the horizon.

Parents regularly make predictions. We do this with all the best intentions to prepare our children for those things that really DO go bump in the night and day, things for which our children are unprepared.

Parents of addicts don't make predictions. We go one step further.

We make projections.

We make movies. We make Lawrence of Arabia and Lord of the Rings epics that run in our heads like a never ending afternoon matinee. Our brains are the screen. Our directors script films where only the worst can happen. We are caught in Scorsese-like plot lines with dire circumstances a recurring theme. Victor Hugo would be hard pressed to write something as dour as our minds can conceive.

These movies never go to video, remaining on our mind's eye screen forever portending only worse-case scenarios. They never end.

"The End" is the unthinkable denouement we all fear in varying degrees.

These movies can rule our lives if we let them.

My wife and I have begun to live outside our respective comfort zones and have ventured outside of our little boxes as part of our individual journeys. We have done this slowly and gently. St. Louis has a wonderful outdoor municipal theater (The Muny) where Broadway plays are hosted as summer stock in both classic and more recent styles. Last summer we bought tickets and actually attended West Side Story and Mary Poppins, simple pleasures we had denied ourselves for too long. I'd like to share a line from Mary Poppins - the Musical that will forever remain on guard at the entrance to the projection room where those Scorsese films are now much less frequently shown:

"Anything can happen if you let it!"

I would never have heard that line, repeated throughout the musical - it is not in the movie -had I not moved along my journey to burst out of my "creature of habit" existence.

We all can make our decisions to enrich our lives by living to life's fullest potential. We all have our "Muny" theaters we can attend. We can go to the projectionist's booth in our heads and demand that the film noir cinematic previews of our children's futures be swapped out for a more positive motion picture of what can happen for us, if we allow it. We will find this to be affirming for us and those we care for who watch as we grow, seek and strive. Our focus now back on us and no longer on the sons and daughters who brought us to this journey, may just scare the shit out of our children.  As we continue our recovery, they are left instead to find their own solutions.

While our movies may not be of the Disney or John Hughes genre, we may have a shot at a Zemeckis film with lots of recovery journey sub plots! Watch Castaway again if you don't know what I mean!

… keep coming back

"Anything can happen if you let it. Life is out there waiting so go and get it. Grab it by the collar, seize it by the scruff. Once you've started living you just can't get enough." ~ Mary Poppins, The Musical