Friday, September 16, 2011

Completing Your Life -A User's Manual

In everything great, there is something that had to be taken away in order to make room for it's greatness.

If you look at life's greatest triumphs, and the greatness in your life, you will notice that everything was already in place yet you needed to take away something from the final product before it was great. They say when asked "How did you carve The David?", Michelangelo replied simply, "I just took away everything that wasn't David"

It makes sense...

In having coffee with a friend the other day, I just found that realization in the terms of my novel.

I took the entire summer off of letting my novel be edited. I hit brick wall after brick wall of trying to take away the portions of the story that didn't make the novel great. I had originally wrote over 1000 pages, and I had gotten the first draft down to about 450 pages. This was still too fat, and it really clouded the message of the novel.

In telling my friend what the premise of my novel was about, my friend summed it up in one sentence which has taken me no less than 5 minutes to tell before this. And the sentence that he gave me was this:

Completing your life -A user's manual.

Let me ask you; have you ever lost someone, and not been complete with them? What if you would've lost that person, and have found out that they had taken the time to write you a letter of completion or closure for you. They took the time while they were still alive to tell you how much you meant to them, how much they loved you and maybe clearing up something that would free you of guilt. So that in the event that something sudden were to happen, this letter would allow you to have closure with them for the rest of their life.

Sounds like a life insurance policy of the emotional type, doesn't it?

How much of a difference would it have made to you in your life if you would've had your loved one write you a letter telling you how much they loved and admired you before they died. You could keep that letter on every important day of your life, and share it with your deceased loved one. Wedding, birthday, anniversary, birth of a baby; you name it.

It sounds like something that everyone in life SHOULD do, right? -Yet we don't. Why is that? We work our asses off during our entire life to build and maintain relationships, create empires, legacies, only to lose them at the end of our lives because we didn't solidify them to those who mattered most to us. This leaves us incomplete with our loved ones for the rest of their lives.

Imagine if you will, if you did this. What do you think the chances were that because you did it, that they would do it after receiving it from you? They would repeat the entire process to their family and friends simply because it meant to much to them and they would want the same feeling for their family, and it would go on for generations.

What a marvellous gift!

So, now that you know what the premise of my book is about, who can't wait to read it?

2 comments:

  1. interesting thoughts....so many things we 'should' do in life, that we don't....

    Looking forward to the book...

    ReplyDelete

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