One of my favorite movies, "Defending your Life" with Robert Brooks and Meryl Streep, suggests that when we leave this world we review the experiences in which we succumbed to fear rather than choosing love. As Daniel (Robert Brooks) reviews his life reviews his life, he realizes that he consistently denied his own good, until the following event: after a nasty divorce, Daniel was left with a small amount of money and an airline ticket for a vacation in Asia. When Daniel arrived at the ticket counter for his trip, the agent told him, "You have 38B".
"Does that mean I'll be sitting in the back of the plane between two other people for ten hours?" he asked.
"I'm sorry sir, there are no other seats available."
"How about in first class?"
"There's one seat left; to upgrade will cost an additional $3,000."
Daniel deliberated for a moment, then said, "I'll take it."
Do you love yourself enough to give yourself what would make you happy? Can you trust that your happiness would not take away from another's good, but will only add to the sum total of joy in the Universe?
It's funny how I came to think about this today; one of my Facebook friends wrote about doing some painting at her house and indicated that she was sore from the work, which was only half done, and it appeared to me that she didn't seem to enjoy the effort. I hate doing stuff like that (painting, weeding, planting, etc.) and would rather take the few bucks it costs to hire someone, and enjoy the experience of them doing the work while I'm doing something I actually enjoy more.
It's funny how some people think they don't have the money to do this, or feel guilty about hiring someone else to help with stuff like that. I just think it's a way of loving yourself, and that with a small amount of effort you can find someone, in your budget, to do a great job.
Connecting with others and enlisting them to help with the tasks you want to get done and don't particularly relish isn't selfish; it's your responsibility. The more you honor yourself with with beauty, play, and job, the greater your capacity to love and serve others will be.
Like Daniel - it's a matter of having the courage to step up and say, "You know what...I deserve to enjoy this process so what will it take to 'get'er done'?"
In the long run I think this helps us to challenge ourselves to recognize that intrinsic worth we share and choose love, of ourselves or of others, rather than fear of scarcity that is so common in many areas of our thinking.
The Etymological Dictionary defines an iconoclast is a “breaker or destroyer of images” from the Late Greek word eikonoklastes. Later, an iconoclast was viewed as “one who attacks orthodox beliefs or institutions.” Today, iconoclasts like perceive things differently than other people - or maybe we just like to be annoying. Either way. This difference in perception plays out in our ideas, worldview and metaphysics - and in how we manage our fears and shadow self. It works well for me.
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