Grip on life

You know that ridiculous belief you holdfast to? For me it’s that Hook¹ is a quality movie. Ok, I’ve come to the point of acceptance that it’s not a top-notch movie. Underrated? Absolutely. Needs to be seen? Probably. Will you enjoy it more with me? Depends on how ok you are with random lines being repeated under my breath. Anyways point is, we all hold fast to beliefs because they make us feel comfortable. We gravitate towards the beliefs that we’ve held onto for awhile. It’s similar to why our friends, for the most part, share most of our same beliefs. They’re what we know. But sometimes those beliefs aren’t always beneficial. They get in the way of us experiencing life. They blind us from learning new things, seeing life through a different lens.


A teacher once put it this way, there are some aspects of life that you need to be sure of, beliefs that you root yourself in, but otherwise hold what you know with an open hand. That is to say don’t be so certain what you “know” is the way the world works, the way a certain people group is, the function of fill-in-the-blank. It’s stereotypes, but it’s also bigger than that.


We need to go out and interact with those that are not the same as us. The sooner we start to realize that world isn’t so black and white and there’s a whole lot more grey than we realized the looser our grip becomes on life. Sometimes there isn’t a right and wrong answer the way so many school answers made us believe. Life isn’t a test you can study for and get 100% on.


A mindset that helped me was from a Buddhist monk. The monk remarked, “You don’t conquer meditation, you practice it.” For some reason I had one of those moments where a connection happened. Life is like meditation. You don’t conquer life you practice it. Some beliefs I have are wrong and some may be right, but realizing that I don’t have it all figured out helps me become more teachable. It helps me loosen my grip on life and my picture of what life is.


Sometimes you gotta just let go and bangarang².


Question: What preconceived beliefs do you have? How can you open up to hear about others views, experiences and opinions?

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1 Steven Spielberg’s 1991 Peter Pan adaptation with Peter all grown up staring, one of my favorites, Robin Williams. The soundtrack is top notch (I may have listened to it over 100 times…) and the acting is surprisingly decent, although that could be nostalgia not letting me view it any other way. But in all seriousness there probably isn’t a moment I can’t work in a Hook quote

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2 Yup, that’s a Hook reference!