Take 2. Rewind. Reboot. Refresh. Clean slate. Blank page. New game. New inning. Do Over. Change Course. Change Lanes. New Line on the Horizon. Take another run at it.
Starting over. These two words, often expressed in a variety of colloquialisms are familiar to most of us. We tend to hear them, particularly every January, spoken in reference to New Year’s Resolutions with statements declaring a new start to the year with a clean slate by initiating of variety of behaviors such as improve relationships, get healthy, balance my life, get organized, get taxes done before April 15, etc. Ushered in by the turning of the calendar page, this cultural ritual offers everyone who participates an opportunity to renew hope for desired changes in various aspects of life. Described in a wide range of vernacular, the meaning of starting over is one that seems to be translated universally - that of forgiving and beginning again.
Forgiving to begin again. I have been ruminating about this lately. It “came to me”, slowly now that I reflect on it, that in order to have the motivation for making the effort to do something different or try again, requires, for me, forgiveness…from anger, resentment, guilt, regret, jealousy and failure – to name a few things I am aware of in my own life. When my heart, soul and spirit are preoccupied with these things and the events that they are tied to, then I am just that – preoccupied with and focused on those things. But when my spirit, heart and soul can receive forgiveness and accept those sorrows, often in the form of losses, I’ve noticed I can have a sense of peace about what I feel I have lost and what I miss.
With a sense of forgiveness received and peace about the lost and the missed, I now have both emotional and mental freedom as well as permission to focus and pursue new beginnings. It seems too, that in receiving forgiveness, I also receive motivation for starting over and finding new beginnings. The willingness and desire to recreate the joys that I felt were taken from me, returns. I believe this is what is called healing!
As many might agree, who have experienced healing from losses and the feelings that present themselves, the healing can be unimaginably painful. My experience is that it includes not only recovery, but a great deal of personal work and reorganization of one’s whole self. The joys however bring unexpected wonders and a sense of love, belonging and often times a giddiness and amazement regarding the following of Love.
A recent film that brought this home to me was the 2011 Steven Spielberg science fiction movie, Super 8. Starring Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning and Kyle Chandler, the story is about a group of teenagers who are filming their own Super 8 movie to be entered in a local film festival. While shooting the film, a passing train offers a great fx op. Instead of enhancing the fx, the train derails when a truck drives in its path. Massive explosions result from the derailment, followed by an annihilating destruction leaving scattered wreckage that can now only be described as undiscernible. But from one of the train cars, something escaped.
In the aftermath of the wreck, the teenagers, who survived, find strange white cubes littered over the landscape. These little white cubes turn out to be the belongings of the something, that escaped from the train car. Dubbed ”Cooper” and described as an extraterrestrial alien spider whose spaceship craft crashed to the earth in 1958, his plan was to use the white cubes called shapeshifters to rebuild his craft and return home.
But rebuilding “Cooper’s” space craft was instead, interrupted when he was captured, imprisoned and tortured by the Air Force who wanted to steal the alien’s technology. Prevented from his pursuit of getting home, ”Cooper” became angry and destructive to humans. Through the telepathic connection of one of the teenagers, named Joe, was it learned that “Cooper” only wanted to return home – where he belonged. Connection established, Joe was able to communicate with “Cooper” the compassionate assurance that not everyone was trying to hurt him and he had the permission to build his spaceship to go home – which he does.
The film is a great one to watch, full of entertaining action, suspense and fun for ages 13 and up in my opinion. It brings to light to the realities of life – loss, longing, feeling unaccepted, alone and in pain. It demonstrates as well that without compassion to heal wounds, defense mechanisms of hostility, anger, control, withdrawal, distance and cutoff run rampant. But with the gift of compassion comes safety, acceptance, trust and vulnerability. And with those gifts come forgiveness – the very starting of over again. It is the freedom to begin and to keep going – to be, to do and to find the love we long for. And really, doesn’t that also mean we find our way back home again?
Below is a poem sent to me by Tobi Fishel Ph.D. entitled Instruction in Joy, by Nancy Shaffer. It is about the need, the joy and the hope of starting over.
Because we spill not only milk
Knocking it over with an elbow
When we reach to wipe a small face
But also spill seed on soil we thought was fertile but isn’t
And also spill whole lives, and only later see in fading light
How much is gone and we hadn’t intended it
Because we tear not only cloth
Thinking to find a true edge and instead making only a hole
But also tear friendships when we grow
And whole mountainsides because they are so many
And we want to live right where black oaks lived,
Once very quietly and still
Because we forget not only what we are doing in the kitchen
And have to go back to the room we were in before,
Remember why it was we left
But also forget entire lexicons of joy
And how we lost ourselves for hours
Yet all that time were clearly found and held
And also forget the hungry not at our table
Because we weep not only at jade plants caught in freeze
And precious papers left in rain
But also at legs that no longer walk
Or never did, although from the outside they look like most others
And also weep at words said once as though
they might be rearranged but which
Once loose, refuse to return and we are helpless
Because we are imperfect and love so
Deeply we will never have enough days,
We need the gift of starting over, beginning
Again: Just this constant good, this
Saving hope.
I wish you all a blessed New Year of forgiveness and the joy of the starting of over again and taking another run at …the many facets of life.
For the Support of Your Life
for the Many Sides of Life
Paulette Jackson MA
facets@bellsouth.net
The thoughts and opinions expressed in The Conversant Counselor’s Blog are those belonging to Paulette Jackson MA and do not necessarily reflect those of any other professional or individual.
