A SLUT IN THE SYSTEM

I've spent a lot of my working life in cinema projection rooms. As new bits of technology are added to existing equipment, systems and programmes in the race to keep up with rapidly changing advances in the technology of exhibiting movies, theatre houses constantly develop electrical and electronic bugs . One of my colleagues, a gem of a techo called Scott Christopher, laconically referred to the bugs as “A slut in the system”.

Well, humans have similar problems. Some initial operating systems, opinions, concepts, choices and beliefs become outmoded and unsuitable after a while; some were seriously flawed in the first place, but took a while and changed circumstances for their defects to show up.

We all have sluts in our systems -- thoughts and conclusions that have been entrenched so long in our being that they define how we see things, attach and interpret meanings, and react to what happens. They define and limit us. But it takes a special set of changed circumstances to bring them to light. In the meantime, they bring even our best intentions and most well-meant actions utterly undone.

 

One of my hidden tripwires is “I'm not what they wanted.” Now I put that together unconsciously in response to how I thought my parents felt about me (I'm not what they wanted). And I dragged that seriously flawed assumption into every other primary relationship since. (I'm not what's wanted here.) Only following the arrival of my two youngest grandchildren has it occurred to me that this programme even existed, let alone the realisation that it was, and always has been, a big mistake.

I am what's wanted. Always have been. Still am; maybe even more so.

Put in your “Maybe” file everything you think you're thinking. Don't believe everything you think. And certainly don't believe anything or anyone that's thinking you. Test all your assumptions, again and again and again....

And, if it helps, remember this from Mirabai Starr: The world needs you. It needs your bewilderment and your yearning. It needs your broken-hearted compassion and your outrageous boldness in the face of impossible odds.

Does it need mine? Does it need yours? What do you think..........?