"Life is like a box of chocolates..."

One of my favorite games that my sibling’s and I used to play and still sometimes do is “guess the movie quote”. We’ll quote a movie and then say “what’s that from?” My brother (and actually my sister too) are really good at the game as they will stump me from time to time and I’ll have to ask for clues. I was talking to my mom this morning about how fun it is to share movie quotes and words that have been spoken by my family such as “how’s the sauce?”, “you must have a hollow leg” and “on the side of your face” (for those, you had to be there but they still bring smiles to my face and I suspect will continue to do so).

So I was thinking about this while driving into work this morning and a movie quote popped in suddenly; “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get” (it’s really fun to say it out loud with the Forrest Gump accent). I am not sure why it was this quote on this particular morning. I’m going to take it as a “whisper” from my intuition and write about what it brought about for me and maybe you’ll get a take away from it as well.

My mind raced over this one because I could write about so many things such as: How to embrace change, the gift of acceptance, not knowing what’s next or how sweet life really is. Then it hit me, maybe it’s about all of that and then some. So here we go…

Okay, so I will admit that there have been times in my life where I would poke the bottom of a chocolate candy in order to see if it was the type that I wanted. If it was, great, I would eat it. But if not, I would put it back in the box and pretend it never happened. And of course, since the bottom of it had the hole in it, it could be hidden and covered up and not dealt with unless some further investigation occurred (you know someone else picked it up, went to eat it and bam! you’ve been exposed)

So this made me think of life in general and how we sometimes put “back” and hide what we don’t necessarily “like” (be it our thoughts, feelings, relationships, bodies, finances, career…) and choose something else that might help us forget (be it diving into work and/or another drink, drug, cigarette, cookie, lover, shopping spree…).

Don’t get me wrong, I am all about the freedom to make choices. It is just sometimes that when we make a choice that we wish we hadn’t, we try to cover it up instead of learning what was there for us to learn in the first place. This can lead us to making the same choice again and going around that same mountain wondering why we keep having the same experience when we so desperately want to experience something else.

When we can step up and take complete responsibility for all of our choices “good” or “bad” (remember those are just words and it’s what we make them mean) it sets us free. We no longer have to carry around the burden and guilt whether or not someone other than us will find out what we did (or thought or were). Then we are able to move into a place of acceptance and peace within ourselves and can set an intention to do better next time.

So there you have it. When we can come out of hiding and change what no longer works we can move into a place of acceptance, forgiveness, love and create a sweet life even though we might not know what we’re gonna get.

And what do you know, I do like buttercreams….


p.s.  I would love to support you in coming out of hiding.  Please contact me at marycunningham67@yahoo.com for a free sample coaching session.