Reflections

It has taken me a long time and involvements all over the world to learn what I now know about love and fate and destiny, about God and life and the choices we make as individuals and how those choices influence and impact, yet do not concretely define nor do they necessarily shape us or our future. 

Somehow, through the screaming in my mind over these last four years, in times of a shackled and bloody helplessness; times of being chained and treated like an animal, tossed and locked in some chaotic world of disbelief, I realized I was still free; free to dream and believe, free to hope and pursue. 

It does not sound like much, I know.  But in the grasp and wound of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom becomes a universe of possibility.  The choice you make between your past and your future, by selecting freedom despite circumstance, you can rewrite the story of your life and ultimately lead to fresh beginnings filled with the same wonder once lived and experienced.  Except maybe, this time around you will experience a heightened awareness and intensified sensitivity to the important affairs of life, to issues that genuinely matter, leading you to a strengthened contentment and gratifying fulfillment neither temporary nor fleeting.

In my past, inexplicably and for reasons unknown, I often failed to express the feelings in my heart to those I love and care about.  Words that I should have spoken were left unsaid.  Perhaps this is the most important verity of life I have come to realize and comprehend.  By choosing freedom in captivity I have illuminated my past, flashing great light in shadowy domiciles of that past.  The past reflects eternally, between two mirrors, and our lives are lived within those reflections – the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of regret from things we didn't do or say. 

The past, for many, is repressive.  It can bind and muddle, loot and plunder, completely disrupt and impede the future, causing one’s life to be lived in the dark mirror.  Or the repression can breed resistance through the choice of freedom.  The truth is, no matter where you've been or what you've done, no matter how good or bad the experiences, you can change your life with the single act of choosing freedom. 

Choosing freedom empowers the repression of the past to become resistance; resistance from making similar mistakes; resistance from living in a realm defined by any given environment; resistance from responding in kind to unkind acts and words of insult and injury.  Choosing freedom has taught me to resist living a life in which people are taken for granted, where expression, gratitude, and kindness remain in some untapped reservoir of the heart, foolishly believing those articulations will avail themselves somewhere down the road.  Words and deeds left unexpressed are not saved but squandered.  May we not waste those moments we are given to enrich the lives of others whom we love and cherish.  May we live every day in the reflections of the bright mirror.