Meaningless

mean·ing·less

[mee-ning-lis] adjective

without meaning, significance, purpose, or value; purposeless; insignificant: a meaningless reply; a meaningless existence.

When you're in line at Starbucks and someone bumps into you, what goes through your mind in that instant? "How clumsy"? "Stupid bitch!"? "Ass hat!"? . . . Do you attach meanings to an insignificant incident? "Didn't they see me?" "What am I, invisible?" "Obviously only thinking of themselves"? How would you feel if you noticed that they were blind? Or mobility impaired? Or crying?

What about when you're on the road? When a car 'cuts you off', do you react? Or is going slower than you feel it should? Or it looks like it's being held together by chewing gum and duct tape? Did the car really cut YOU off, or did the driver jump into your lane because they saw an opportunity? Do you tailgate them, blow your horn, flip them off, or go around them and then cut them off too? Do you ride the bumper of the car in front of you trying to bully it into going faster? Does mocking another car/driver make you feel better about what you're driving? What if that car is the best they can afford & the driving is praying it holds together just long enough to get to work so they don't get fired?

How much time to we spend in our lives assigning meaning to meaningless things? How much time in each day do we spend making judgements against things that we really have nothing to do with? How much time in our lives to we spend in the pursuit of anger? Manufacturing it, promoting it, feeding it, and worse yet . . . justifying it. How much time do we spend spinning the 'stories' of our lives versus living the moments of our lives? At the end of our lives, do you feel you'll be celebrating friendships and love or kicking yourself and regretting the accumulated hours-days-minutes spent in anger and lost opportunities? 

Oh, there are those Hallmark Card Moments we see in commercials . . . warm, fuzzy, tugging at our heart strings, but how many of us actually look for or create them in our daily lives? When your mother's/father's name pops up on your incoming call display do you answer immediately and say "Hi! I was just thinking about you. You must've heard me say how much I love you." Or do you say "Damn! . . . Now what do they want?" Are you the type that just reaches out to hold your loved one's hand, or do you just say "Pull my finger!"?  

Oh, I'm just as bad as anyone else. There is no 'Pretty Perfect Princess' living under this roof despite the abundance of tiaras in my chiffonier. I've built novels of 'meaning' into 'things that were done to me' while not actually seeing what happened or what was said. Why do we pick up the gauntlet all ready to fight when we should be fighting to understand? Have we hardwired our 'Fight or Flight' response as our 'go-to' for every occasion?  When did civility go out of style, or compassion, even tenderness? Some days it's just to hard to watch what goes on around me, the things that are said, the emotions expressed, the actions against others. So much bullying in so many shapes and forms. I've been guilty of it too . . . looking down my nose at people-places-things . . . my very own form of snobbery.

So what can I do? What can we do?
We can stop buying into our own drama. We can stop being the diva in our own opera. Stop being the observer or narrator and maybe actually get our hands dirty and get involved. We can maybe be the hero for once, the ingenue, the best friend, the good guy. 
We can live our lives with out the stories, we can live the moments of our lives. I want to . . . do you?

*Editors Note:
I'm very sorry that there's been such a gap. I went through the Forum over the weekend and spent Monday recovering . . . Yes, it's that intense.
Insights and observations to follow!