DESIGNED TO BEND

When I was sixteen I came home to an empty house, was in the process of changing clothes and heard a drawer shut in my parents' bedroom. Heavy footsteps down the hall and then screaming and yelling in my face. I ran and got away by jumping out of my window and scaling an embankment to our neighbor's back door.

After viewing dozens of images in a book, I finally identified the man in my home. I was sure it was him. Everything in me was convinced. And yet, when we went to court it was discovered that I had identified the wrong man.

I share all this because at the tender age of sixteen I became intimately aware that the brain has its way with us. We become so sure that we are right…so absolutely rigid in our opinions, impressions, judgements that we are willing to let it rule our lives and even potentially ruin the lives of others.

Many of us never have the gift of being proved wrong.

We go about our days holding steadfast to our "positions" without ever having the realization that we may be terribly misinformed. Or at the very least, not completely right.

What a shame to walk through this glorious one life with the rigidness of stone. We are designed to bend…to take in…to listen…to imagine…to understand. We are designed to learn and grow and become and change.

How then, is it right or even logical to stand so firmly in our positions that we aren't willing to listen or research…to tell our brains there must be something more.

Contrary to all that we think, our brains are not us!

Our thoughts do not rule us. We rule our thoughts. And so, this is what I tell myself this morning. To be mindful of my posture (emotional, physical, spiritual) as I go about my day. Be open to learning something. Be open to change. I am not afraid of becoming something new. I am not afraid to let go of what I think if it holds me captive.