Anita… What wonderfully timely and applicable advice that was.

I rented The Never Ending Story immediately after reading your post. Maybe it was just that “when the student is ready, the teacher will teach” but in any case my takeaways from that moving were profound. I think my life had to get to this point for me to be open to the lessons in that movie. I believe watching that movie would be great for anyone who thinks they’ve lost everything. Here are my takeaways from the first watching:

I have to go alone. (I have to go through this; only I can go through this and I have to go through this alone.)

You can’t heal if you don’t hurt.

Fancy armor doesn’t help. (My facade of I’m not hurting; I’m still just running my business – isn’t going to help.)

Confronted with themselves most men run away. (When I look at my lifestyle over that last 30 years and especially over the last 4 years it’s pretty painful to see the degree to which it didn’t work.)

“Fantasia” is the fantasy of man. It is created by the hopes of man so it has no boundaries. It dead in the swamp of sadness.

I have nothing more and nothing less than I’ve ever had. If all that I had was something than how is it all gone now? That applies to material things as well as relationships.

In the end… or in the beginning… there is only one grain of sand and that one grain of sand will become anything I wish it to be. I simply have to name it and it will become whatever I wish it to be.

Thank you again for your suggestion. I’ll watch this movie a couple more times over the next few days and probably have more to add.