"Cher and Share Alike"

I know, I know, for someone who says he does not worship celebrities, here I am ready to talk about Cher. In my own defense, it's not really about Cher being Cher, but it's about sharing something I once heard her say during an interview on the Sally Jessy Raphael show.

Twice, during my lifetime, I've "gone into" therapy. The first time I was, I don't know, 21 or 22, and the second time was just before I went back to Chicago to take care of Mrs. Wakeman (see previous posts) so that means it would've been just before I turned 36. Both times, the sessions only lasted a few weeks because something told me if I was in therapy, then the fan must've really been hit so the best thing I could do was to hunker-down and figure-out, on my own, what the heck was going on.

Ultimately, shows like Oprah, Sally Jessy Raphael, Montel Williams etc... were my therapy. Honestly, Oprah was my favorite, and I felt I was right there along-side her learning and growing as an individual. I learned a lot from watching her show, because I took it on. And what I mean by that is I applied what her guests were saying to my own life. I didn't look at it as though it were about "those people", because I determined myself to be one of those very people. I knew there were parts of my life that did not bring me joy and even though I didn't have conscious awareness of my love and responsibility for self, I definitely displayed it in my desire to make changes, improve and feel better about who I am.

I learned about my favorite book by way of watching Oprah, and I believe it was, if not still is, her favorite book also. "The Seat of the Soul" by Gary Zukav. From time to time, I'll probably refer to it, because I've read it something like, I don't know, four times and each time I take on something new.

What this book did and continues to do for me is teach me about spirituality. I was raised with religion, but I wouldn't say I had spirituality. It was more about following rules than having a sense of connectedness to my own life and the lives of others. And then there was fear. Fear was what kept us in line. Fear was used to control. My experience with religion also came with a lot of judgment of self leading to judgement of others; I have come to believe this to be an avenue to keep me away from rather than close to others.

Okay, so how does this all relate to Cher and Sally Jessy Raphael? It relates, because I have learned a lot from watching television, especially, like I said, from talk shows.

On this particular show, Sally asked Cher if she had any regrets in life with respect to her career etc...; Cher said something like this, "I did what I did at the time because that's what I chose to do" and then she said something I remember as if it just happened yesterday; she said, "If we're not careful, we can become our own regret archivist". When I heard that, I got the chills and felt the message affect my entire body. Call it an awakening or an epiphany or whatever you want, but it made incredible sense to me. What I heard was to live my life to the fullest and do with it those things that make me the most happy and believe in who I am, and the choices I make and realize that when I chose to do something, I did it based upon what I knew at the time so to go back later and judge what I chose to do based on new information is futile. It also then made sense to me that going back and questioning every decision and trying to rework it, just brings anxiety and fear when making new decisions to the point of not making any decision at all but then the farce and craziness of that is there is no such thing as not making a decision because choosing to not make a decision related to some issue IS STILL MAKING A DECISION and that decision is to not make a decision. Get it? You may have to read it a couple of times, but it'll eventually make sense.

And as Cher said, "Don't become your own regret archivist".