Stranger than Fiction

Harold Crick is living a monotonous, highly organized, routine life. He counts how many times he brushes his teeth and how many steps he needs to take to get to the bus stop. He is intricately aware of how many minutes and seconds everything takes. Nothing spontaneous or joyful, and Harold has no intimate relationships that involve communication from the heart.

 

He begins to question who is in control of his life when he one day starts hearing a woman’s voice narrating his life, describing his every move. Is he in control? Is it the narrator who is in control? And who is the narrator? What is the genre of his life’s story? How will it end? Harold begins to pay attention and to watch how he is living his life. This starts to bring his attention to the most important question of all: a question of purpose. When his heart begins to open to the possibility of living his life differently, fear immediately enters and he hears the voice speaking of “his imminent death.”

 

The script is written. The ego projected the world and all of the stories. Every human story ends in death, and so the question becomes how am I going to live this life? Do I dare to live it fully and embrace the opportunity to love now? Let’s allow our mind to be lifted up above the script of the character into an identity that cannot die.

 

When the purpose of awakening is given to our life, we are tuning into the script through prayer and inner listening, and it becomes a vibrant, living experience. Through forgiveness and awakening to a new purpose, the script can seem to be rewritten. In truth it is being reinterpreted. The focus shifts from a tragedy of avoiding death and preserving an individual life, to loving attentiveness being given to every moment.

 

Every moment and every thing in this moment is what can save our life when it is seen for what it is: A moment to be spent with an open heart.