What’s In Your Pillow?

  “Which is more important?  The world you can touch, facts, or the WORLD YOU ARE RESPONDING TO?

The movie “Doubt” is a story about that question.  In it, a priest is accused on very little, no, on no evidence of molesting a boy.  Interesting statements of the accusing nun (not exact quotes):

See he IS who I THOUGHT HE WAS.  Proving that the priest is WHO SHE THINKS HE IS quickly becomes more important than the truth.  The priest: “What proof do you have?”

The nun pounds her chest as says, “None.  But I have my ‘CERTAINTY’.”

The priest:  “Your ‘certainty’ is no more than your ‘feeling’, it is not a fact.”

I’ve always been impressed by how we make other people up as we go along.  How much of WHO WE ARE is our playing out of our parents’ “certainty” of who we would become?  In what ways have we limited our goals playing out the expectations of others? 

Okay, here’s where I usually slip into a guilt bog thinking, “And what about the children I’ve influenced and limited?  And my husband?  He’d probably be president if I didn’t work out my anxiety by being critical of him?

Enough about that.  I have to sleep at night.

Where I end up on this is another interesting question.  If in my head I SEE OTHER PEOPLE AS DANGEROUS and CRITICAL . . .  . . .how much of that is the WORLD I’M RESPONDING TO IN MY HEAD that doesn’t even exist?

In what ways am I LIMITING MYSELF by the ME I’ve CREATED IN MY HEAD that doesn’t REALLY EXIST?

ba-deep, ba-deep, ba-deep.  More hard stuff to come trying to engage the THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM ain’t for sissies.

Optimism:  A company running an ad on television which says, “Find all the gold in your house, put it in a brown envelope (that we will send to you for FREE!) and mail it to US!  Then, once we receive your envelope, we’ll pick some random amount of money out of the AIR and send you a CHECK (for however much we decided, while giggling hysterically, we wanted to send!)

Oh, the pillow thing?  Later. I won’t forget.  Cause it’s important and has feathers in it.