“Out, out, damn spot!” (Or, at least, my interpretation of the famous Shakespearean quote.)
Whoa! What a dramatic start! How about an explanation for quoting Shakespeare’s murderous Lady Macbeth, right off the bat.
OK, can do. Will try to lower the temperature from the initial high drama of said quote. Although it certainly garnered your attention, didn’t it?
In my headspace, also known as my mind, I tend to unspool an ongoing personal cinema, replete with diverse actors, passions, judgments, all the stuff of which a life is made. You, no doubt, have your own variation on that theme, populated by your chosen (and often unchosen) actors, passions, and judgments. And as a human being, if you’re anything like me, your personal cinema has considerable focus on replays.
Replays? Re-running the same life segments over, and over, and over again. Will they never stop? (Hence the Macbeth quote of “out damn spot.”) And unlike watching a film which, generally, has its own endpoint, my own personal cinema can be an exhausting rerun of the same life events. (Not an enticing feature. However, even though it’s my mind, I often seem not to have volitional choice about rerun-city.)
Reaching a critical kernel in this narrative. Finally. What’s the overriding content in my internal cinema that warrants replay after replay (after replay?) I’ll give you a hint. It’s a universal human thing. A “thing” with which most of us, of the human variety, struggle. Relationships with others. Might I say “Oy?”
Sigh. No surprises here, eh? Sadly, these replays are often yours truly’s judgments of others. (You think it’s in the water we drink?)
Ah, but Wunderbar, I discovered a disruptor of my personal cinema’s judgments! Wow, what an incredibly uplifting way to start the day! My identified disruptor is, of all things, graciousness. That’s it - graciousness. Can you believe it? Summoning a felt sense of warm-heartedness and consideration towards another struggling human. Someone not unlike myself who, of course, is also a struggling human.
It’s truly amazing how consciously transitioning into a state of being warm-hearted toward someone seems to greatly mediate the sharp edges of my internal judgments. (Well, many of them, anyway.) My personal cinema replays, and replays, and replays? Diminished, diminished, diminished. Being kindly cognizant, and all, I’ll now let you off the hook for reading anything more. How’s that for being warm-hearted?
YESSSSS
You got me! I was waiting for a negative incident and none appeared. Instead a polite invitation to kindness. How Jan!