Читать книгу Shadows Of Acceptance - Nancy Inc. Rockey - Страница 3

“We live in the Shadowlands. The sun is always shining somewhere else. Round a bend in the road.”

In one of our favorite films, Shadowlands, the true story of C.S. Lewis’s life and marriage to Joy, Lewis speaks the above words. This famous sentiment seems to rightly depict the experience of most people – that joy, enlightenment and happiness is just around a bend, out of view, out of reach. The truth is that in order for there to be a shadow, the sun or light must be shining somewhere, so that a shadow can be cast. Could it be that light is right there in front or behind us, but because we predict that moving toward the light might be too painful, we choose to live only close to what could illuminate or make clear our understanding and progress? We live where we are, in one sense, comfortable, rather than pressing out into the unknown. Living in the shade, we are blinded by the light or we turn our back on it. It is predictable that in that artificial place, we will become gloomy, and perhaps see or comprehend only the outline or frosty image of the real, the true.

While people long for happiness, for the companionship of friends or family, for acceptance and the knowledge that they are cherished, still some illusion seems to keep from us, that which we long for most. An old experience or several of them, can become ghostly nightmares which haunt our present reality and paralyze us from action. Old slights experienced, old harsh words directed our way, old feelings that we were not wanted lurk in the darkness and we live in the shadow of the real, the longed-for dream. There in the scary world of the unknown or the partially seen, we languish, we suffer old hurts over and over again, until we lose sight of hope or a positive future.

The shadow of rejection is simply the flip side of the real – acceptance. It is the shadow, if you will, of the real object. Acceptance, the object for which we seek, seems to be held back by the shadow’s fierce grip or blocked from view by a history of rejection. If we would step out of the shadow and into the light, we could see that the truth of acceptance has been present all the while. There has not been for one fraction of a second, even the slightest bit of rejection from the only source that really matters, yet even that truth has been hidden from view by one who sneaks in the shadow reminding us of our unworthiness.

Stepping out into the light of truth however, dictates that we must really turn our backs to the lurking shadow, and that step requires just enough glimmering light to see that we are not stepping off a cliff into a deep chasm – just enough of truth to give us the courage to press forward. It requires just enough acceptance from somewhere to see that acceptance is indeed possible.

We are shaped by the way we think and feel, feeling coming before thinking. If our earliest feelings were of not belonging, not being wanted, not feeling loved and adored, our thoughts will follow when we are developed enough to think them. Those thoughts become our reality; they shape our attitudes toward our own value and our behaviors toward others. Knowledge alone will begin to enlighten the shadowlands, that place where, as Lewis says, our happiness is just beyond a bend in the road where the sun must be shining. Let’s dare to walk together out of our shadows and into the light.