An exciting day
Is bursting with peace
It’s soaked in easy smiles
And relaxing times
I don’t need the scary parts
To have fun
Anymore
—
About the poem;
Well, on one level, this poem is about quitting the chaos addiction. When you go through a 12-step program, one thing you learn is that you might have grown up surrounded by a lot of drama and trauma, so as an adult you might actually be creating it, any chance you get. But if you can break that addiction, you can thoroughly enjoy easy, happy times without thinking it’s boring. You can savor the day without the need to generate a bunch of trouble and complaints.
Now, on another level, this is about movies and something I learned from my six-year-old friend. I checked out two movies and they both looked really cute. One was The Brave Little Toaster, a Disney movie. It was scary! And if you’ve ever taken a young child to a Disney movie, you know that they are often scarier than you’d imagine and that even though you feel like you’re being great, you end up traumatizing an unsuspecting kid. That happened again this week.
But, before watching the second movie, my young friend explained: I think the Veggie Tales movie will be better. You see, when a movie is long, they have to fill in the middle with scary parts. Arthur and Veggie Tales are short, so they are better. Marc Brown makes Arthur stories and I think he is calm because he makes stories without scary parts. Arthur and Veggie Tales are better than Disney movies.
After watching, he said, Yes, I was right. It was better.
Hmm. Wow! Ha! (Now, I’m not Roger Ebert so I will neither agree with not rebut that statement about what movies are better.)
And an interesting twist, the Veggie Tales movie I chose was about handling fear. The movie was called The League of Incredible Vegetables. The moral of the movie was when you are afraid, ‘Trust God’ because God is bigger than any problem you have.
Okay, I agree that when you have a problem, you can generally overcome it by your thinking. But, I don’t like to say Trust God. Because I can’t prove that there is a God. What I can say for sure though, is that you can step back and remember that life is short and that today we are alive, and that the challenges we face are interesting and temporary. That encourages me to see life as a challenging game, rather than a series of disappointments and reasons to whine and complain and feel miserable.
So, if I made a Veggie Tales kinda movie, the lesson would be, when you are afraid, trust that life is bigger than your current problem. Trust yourself. Trust life. Trust that you have a bigger purpose. And if you want to call that God, please, feel free, go right ahead.
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