Ghosts Within

Facing Life is Living With Ghosts.

We live with them every day. Ghosts of past relationships, past choices, past loves, lost ideals, forgotten hopes, and possibilities not taken. They flit through our awareness when we least expect them. Ghost images of my Dad’s eyes look at me in the mirror, along with my Mom’s smile, and my Grandmother’s blond fair coloring.

Ghosts are filled with many false memories, and triggered emotions. Mind makes more of them, in many cases, makes them more important than they were at the time. Mind is constantly embellishing drama, obsessing over perceived hurts, and creating stories filled with half remembered details. Don’t be drawn into the old stories you think happened, or partially remember. Everyone did the best they could in the moment. Memories are only Ghosts, after all.

As I pull myself back to the present, a bit more solemn with the emptiness of loved ones crossed over, my smile will never quite be the same. Ghosts haunt me as I seek to remember their laugh, hugs, and presence. I see the world with new eyes each day, allowing the healing of art, Nature, flowers, and the beauty of new growth. Truly Facing Life is embracing all my losses without regret, and savoring the rich gifts I have been given with each person, each experience I have known. We can never really know what life could have been. Each jewel of knowledge leads to where we are today, fortified and filled by our choices now.

Possibilities live like parallel Universes, in another place, another time. Every day our chosen path is being created, shifted, made new by our focus Now in this Moment of Power. We take up what we have, and gracefully step forward making Life better than yesterday. That is consciously facing Life in mindfulness. Let’s all embrace our Ghosts, thank them for their experiences, and bring them with us on the journey.