Shortly after I retired, I attended several self-help seminars with my wife. Over a series of days we were asked to walk on a carpet of broken glass, eat fire by swallowing a burning torch and break boards with our bare hands. My initial reaction to each of these challenges was, “No way!! Not in a million years!!!”
Yet, when I saw an eighty year old great-grandmother strolling across the broken glass, my thinking shifted. Each activity was designed to push us to go beyond what we thought we were capable of; and to revise our thinking which limited us.
That lesson of the possibility for creating change within myself was irrevocably engraved on my heart.
At one seminar, the presenter compared life to a plate of pasta. He told us that every day we should (metaphorically) hurl that plate of pasta against a wall. Most of the pasta would hit the wall and immediately fall off. Those were the things in life that we would encounter but would be of little benefit to us. We might even decide to experiment with some of them, but invariably we found that they were not a good fit or did not move us forward in the way we had anticipated.
Then there were the occasional pieces of pasta that stuck to the wall. Those were the events and moments in our lives, which could be a turning point for us. Perhaps we met someone who we connected with on a deep level, or read something which irrevocably altered our thinking, or began a practice that we immediately adopted, or made a shift in lifestyle which led to improvements in health and wellbeing or encountered a career path which we decided to pursue. All of these and many more are all pieces of pasta on the wall.
What’s interesting is that everyone’s wall of pasta is different. Some of my pasta may not stick to your wall, and something which you love would just bounce off mine. Yet I’m sure that we do share certain types of pasta that stick to both of our walls.
So, now that I’ve gone through all those metaphors, we can speak about the purpose of this blog. For probably the last 40 years I have encountered many practices which have greatly changed or enhanced my life for the better. My physical health, emotional sobriety, financial security, psychological wellbeing and spiritual life have all evolved as a result of the choices I have made.
Each post on this blog will be a description of a something I encountered and connected with and incorporated into my life. I realize that not every one of my choices will necessarily work for you. I urge you to experiment and see which ones do. Beyond that, if you have incorporated something else into your life which has greatly affected you, I would love to hear about it.
Moshe
Pasta on a Wall 