I just picked up this fantastic book called ‘God Never Blinks: 50 Lessons for Life’s Little Detours’ by Regina Brett and I couldn’t recommend it more highly, even though I’ve only read the introduction and the first chapter! Why would I endorse a book when I have only read very little of it? Have you ever read something, a quotation, a poem, a passage, or watched a movie scene, or heard a piece of music, or saw a painting or work of art, and just been taken aback, stopped in your tracks, filled with the knowing that you are a witness to what can only be described as TRUTH, the truth of the divinity in all of us? This feeling empowers you, humbles you, fills you with serenity and with fear at the same time, a fear that you probably have been sleepwalking for most of your life, going through the motions of life in a fog of ignorance? What you’ve just been witness to also makes you angry, angry at your parents, your teachers, your government, your friends, at yourself. “Why didn’t anyone tell me this TRUTH existed years ago, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time and life, living in fear, wandering in the darkness?”, you ask yourself.
What is this truth that so affected me that I had to stop reading God Never Blinks after only a few pages and reevaluate my entire life? Lesson 1 in GNB is titled ‘Life Isn’t Fair, But It’s Still Good’, and Regina tells the story of how she got cancer in her early forties, and how she started wearing a baseball cap after she began losing her hair because of the chemotherapy treatments. But this was no ordinary cap. She saw a man wearing one and she wanted one too, because of the message on it. It said, ‘Life Is Good‘ . The man, whose name is Frank, gave her one as a gift and after Regina recovered from cancer, she began to give it to other cancer patients to wear, with the stipulation that they pass it on to other cancer patients once they recovered. She calls it the Chemo Cap and thus far everyone who has worn it has recovered from cancer.
As inspiring and life-affirming as the story of the Chemo Cap is, that is not the part of the lesson that stopped me in my reading tracks. The guy who gave Regina the Life is Good cap, Frank, shared something else with her. It is his philosophy, his mental model of life, and it is summed up in two words: get to.
Frank lives his life not telling himself, “I have to go to work”, or “I have to exercise”, or “I have to take the kids to soccer practice”, or “I have to study for an exam”, or “I have to get up in the early in the morning”. He tells himself’, “I get to wake up early in the morning”, “I get to go to work”, “I get to drive the kids to soccer practice”, “I get to go to the gym and work out”, “I get to go to chemotherapy and fight another day”.
What a difference a word makes. I read that and I felt like the scales fell from my eyes, the clouds parted and the sun illuminated the darkness. I didn’t have to read any more. I didn’t need to read any more.I couldn’t read any more. I got up from my seat in the bookstore, walked up to the cashier, bought ‘God Never Blinks‘ and drove home, filled with excitement and gratitude, regret and relief. I realized that although I thought of myself as an introspective thinker who viewed the world and life with a healthy and positive perspective, most of my lifeview had been clouded by the wrong two words, have to. By thinking, saying, feeling those words, everyday, all my life, I had lived my life looking through the lenses of obligation, compulsion, sacrifice, unfairness, victimhood, self-pity, and resentment. Reading Frank’s philosophy was a humbling indictment of my mental model of the world. Was I so unaware, so self-absorbed, so shallow? A lifetime of ‘I have to’s’ and how those words shaped everything, my career, my relationships, my happiness, ran through my mind. “I have to go to school”, “I have to study”, “I have to get a job”, “I have to take a vacation”, on and on, a life taken for granted rather than a life lived in gratitude.
So, my goal is to eliminate the words ‘I have to’ from my mind, from my speech, from my heart.I’ve been doing this for a few days now, replacing ‘have to’ with ‘get to‘ in my mental model of life and I already feel a lot more positive, more excited, and more empowered. It’s not easy changing a lifetime of automatic disempowering and disabling thinking, especially when your self-image was based on seeing yourself as unselfish, grateful and kind of wise, but changing is necessary to really enjoying life. From what I’ve read so far of God Never Blinks, Regina Brett seems to be one of those special people who has the ability and gift to deeply empathize about the human condition, and communicate that empathy in ways that make us feel kinship with each other, and to make us feel we will be alright. I see a kindred spirit in her and I think many others will also when they read her book.
Well, I have to (oops!), get to go now. I get to take the trash out. Then I get to pay some bills. Woohoo!
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