A pivotal moment in my life was when I heard the words: Life is Empty and Meaningless.

What? What the hell does that mean? But yeah, the Forum Leader proclaimed:

Empty and Meaningless and then looked at us, smug and boastful.

I’d been sitting here for 13 hours a day for the past 2.5 days and that’s what I paid $695 for!?! I felt the heat rising in my face and the familiar lump in my stomach. The room began filling up with laughter and applause rapidly building as each person “got it”, one by one like popcorn popping once it gets hot enough. I felt cheated, left out of some cosmic reveal. I wanted to get it too. I wanted to experience the euphoria everyone around me was experiencing.

Don’t get me wrong, over the past few days I’d gotten a LOT out of this course. Things that would stay with me forever. But this was the mother lode they’d promised. This was IT. But IT eluded me.

I’ve always felt out of the loop in life. On the peripheral of friendships and social circles. I was there, present, but I always felt like an observer and not a part of the group. And I wanted IN. I paid for access this time.

And then it hit me not like I imagine a 2X4 would feel, but more like a mosquito buzzing about. I was making all of that up. I was writing the story of my life as it went along. Do my friends see me as an outsider or would they be surprised to know I felt that way. How do they see me? Do they feel like outsiders too?

My life isn’t empty and meaningless and that’s not what the seminar leader said. Life itself is. It has no opinions, no emotions about anything. It has no stake in the game. It just is. And it goes on and on with or without me. Or you.

We are the ones who assign meaning to our lives. We are the architects of our lives and how we see and interpret things.
From that moment on, I have experienced a kind of freedom. The freedom of choice and living a life by design. Do I still fall into the trap of believing my own stories as being absolute truths? I do. But then I remember, I get to rewrite how I interpret them any time I want.

Getting that has been the single most pivotal moment of my life.

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Submitted by Tina Graves
Corona Chronicles, April 10, 2020