The Road to Happy Endings

Have you ever found yourself sitting at a stop sign and not had a clue about which way to go?  Welcome to my club.  I’ve never been very good with maps (or decisions in general for that matter), so God bless whoever saved my bacon with GPS.  Many a time in my past I have sat in stall mode until I realize that somewhere a horn is blasting a hole in my thought process, and mild panic and a hasty decision force me to get out of the way, make a turn, and I end up lost, frustrated, and angry at the hand on the horn.

Past experience has taught me one important lesson—when the horn starts honking, pull off to the side of the road and let the honker pass on by.  Do not allow the influence of another to force or hasten an important decision that deserves careful consideration.  Sometimes it’s best to just hang out in void mode for a while, and allow the answer to reveal itself in its own good time.  I have also learned the hard way that impatience can derail the best of intentions and cause me to honk my own horn resulting in a premature unwise choice.  Patience is definitely a virtue.

I have come to a moment in life when I have pulled off the road, considered all of my options, made a decision to stop for a while and hang out in void mode to wait and see what’s next.  Now is the time to whip out my patience and sit in the quiet void in anticipation of what is to come.  The past is gone never to return. What’s ahead is still a mystery.

It is a scenario that I have experienced many times before.   I am sitting in a familiar place in my mind, in an empty theater staring at a closed curtain, awaiting the moment when the behind-the-scene work is done, the stage will be set, the curtain will rise, and I will finally get to see the long-awaited and much anticipated next act of my life.  

While I wait, I entertain myself with a rerun of earlier acts and think about what I liked and didn’t like, what worked and what didn’t, about what I would add, delete, rewrite or rearrange.  I contemplate future possibilities about how the play might unfold, how I might like it to end, if there is any way that I could change the dialogue or write a story that would be more to my liking, or make a difference in the outcome.  I am, after all the one who writes my own life’s script.

Oh but wait—I look around and discover that I am no longer alone in the theater.  I am surrounded by all of you, all of you who share in this moment of void, this time of empty uncertainty of unknowing, all of you who are anxiously awaiting the curtain to rise to reveal the next act, the next stage of the play in which we are all actors together.  It is a pregnant pause, as we sit together in the void, awaiting the moment when we can view the beginnings of a new act and watch as it manifests into the reality of what is to be.

What will it be?  What script will I write?  Will I write a happy ending?  What will the future be? What will I decide? I think I’ll just keep on hanging out in the void for a while longer and keep working on the rewrites until I get it right. I’m all about dreaming up happy endings, after all. I hope I’ll see you as one of the actors in the happy ending of my dream.

Note:  The photo above is courtesy of New Waves of Light, a website designed by anonymous individuals around the world who share the intention of bringing light and love to a world of darkness and chaos. (newwavesoflight.org or NWOL.us)