Time well spent ...

Having no cable, and lousy antenna reception meant working my way through my dvd collection ... even after watching the first three seasons of Hawaii Five O I found the need to go and rent some new flicks overwhelming ...

Thanks to Rogers Video in Brandon I rented over 21 videos in a two and a half week stretch ... after a long day at work, tearing around Brandon looking for a house to purchase (which proved successful), and getting household chores finished while packing, crashing on the couch with a video proved to be a good way to unwind ...

I watched numerous movies - some good, some bad and some mediocre ... but two that stood out were My Life as House, which I've watched a dozen times before, and The Bucket List with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson as two men who meet in a palliative care ward following a diagnosis of terminal cancer ...

Freeman's character, a car mechanic with a vast wealth of trivial knowledge covering almost every topic from the profound to the mundane, and Nicholson's character, a billionaire investor who buys the hospital he suddenly finds himself confined in, make an unlikely yet highly enjoyable pairing.

It's not a GREAT movie, but it has a profound lesson.



The two men look back on their lives and wonder if things could have turned out differently ... in seeking to accomplish ALL the things they wrote on the list of items they would want to achieve before kickin' the bucket, they learn that life is a precious gift and that simply settling for the way things are is an utter waste of time, energy and life ...

Like a page out of Eckhart Tolle, the two men journey focused only on the NOW (after all, that's ALL they have) and without fear claim life in its fullness. They go and do all the things they want to do - but in the end realize that LOVE is the one unalterable reality in life ... love of family ... love of friends ... love of self ...

Love that accepts us without condition or hesitation ... love that is more than a warm pink fuzzy from external influences ... love that is free of fear and hesitation ... love that gives wholly of itself and in return receives back no less ... love that is precious and rare, and that too often we flee rather than embrace ... love that comes from within, as we confront our Pain-Body and set ourselves free of its stifling influence ...

The words "I can't do this ..." have no place in love ... for in love there is no hesitation, no fear, no doubt, only the full acceptance of THIS MOMENT, freed at last of the Pain-Body that spins a tail of deception, half-truths and delusions ...

Love is a precious gift if we have the courage to claim it ... and too often we allow our ego (our pain-body) to convince ourselves that we are "in love" when we are merely feeding our fear, our ego, and our Pain-Body ... the lesson of The Bucket List is to embrace life and to live fully present to the NOW, free of our Pain-Body ...

Sadly though, it is a lesson that is lost on many ... and many more simply will not open themselves up to the awakening that naming the Pain-Body represents ... it is safer to settle and live a life that our ego has convinced us through the short-sighted delusions that arise from our Pain-Body is ALL WE'RE entitled to ... we suppress our yearnings for more, convincing ourselves we've gotten what we're entitled to, and what we deserve, even if the core of our beings tells us otherwise ...

The Bucket List underscores the lessons of Tolle ... and Tolle helps remind us to focus on ourselves and to live life fully present to this moment ...