My Billboard Reads…

The flashing red sign on the church’s electronic billboard read: “Happy New Year – another chance to Get It Right.”  I groaned.  As if we know what “right” is!  Sure, we were all taught various versions of right and wrong, best and worst, shouldn’t and ought, as if they were absolute, always clearly to be seen.  However the process of growing up and experiencing life has told me that this “right”, which when applied to me, becomes an impossible, frustrating goal that spirals into the underlying and deep-rooted feeling that I’m not good-enough, because I never get it all “right.”  Do I even know what “getting it right” looks like?  Is it possible to know something like that?

So in light of my perpetual and not-necessarily-healthy quest to “get it right”, and the default message that says I won’t, (does anyone else have this experience?) the last thing I need is the local church telling me to keep trying to find or to be this elusive “right.”  What if life, specifically my life, is all right just as it is – with all its shades of gray?

Possibly I misunderstood.  Maybe the sign is supposed to be a play on words:  “Get it right,” as opposed to “left,” in thinking, or politics perhaps?  But no, they couldn’t mean that, because this was a United Church (of Canada) sign, and haven’t they been called the NDP (New Democratic Party) at prayer?

Is a fresh calendar year really another chance?  What is the difference between my life on Dec 31 2011, and Jan 1 2012?  If you have already made those New Year’s resolutions that you think will make your life “right”, I suggest you look at Bruce Sanguin’s blog to find out why it is easier to resolve than it is to act. Suggesting that we can ever “get it right”, that there is ONE “right”, is offering not only an unrealistic expectation but also false hope.  How so?

Maybe it is this: Do we imagine that if we “get it right” then, as if by some magic, we will avoid the most awful things that are ‘out there’, that we can prevent or protect ourselves from the pain and suffering that is part of life?  If it is the ego that wants to “get it right”, it is the soul that knows this to be impossible.  How so?

The final chapter of James Hollis’ book Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life is titled: The Healing of the Soul.[1]  He defines the soul as “our intuited sense of a presence that is other than the ego . . . and sometimes in conflict with the ego . . . and summons ego consciousness to an accounting.”  How does one identify one’s soul?  He writes:  “When we ask the meaning of a mood, reflect upon our history, inquire into the dynamics of a physical symptom, ponder a dream, we are in dialogue with soul. When we are wrung by life, flung into dismal depths, then lifted higher than we thought possible, transformed from what we were to what we become, we are in the presence of soul.  Be we are always in the presence of soul, whether consciousness reflects upon it or not.”

My billboard reads:  “Happy Near Year – another chance to remember that we are in the presence of soul.”  As John Lennon famously wrote, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”.   Don’t miss out on yours by trying to “get it right.”  Simply show up – to all there is!