A Notebook of New Beginnings
2004 Boaz Rauchwerger
In school, a teacher writes on the chalk board. At the end of the day, those notes are usually erased and the slate is wiped clean.
What if life could be that way? What if each day we could erase from our memory whatever wasnt productive from our past? What if we could forget any regrets, any resentments, any animosities? It would certainly lighten our emotional load, wouldnt it?
The road to failure is paved with heartaches and resentments that too many people drag behind them from one day to the next. The accumulated emotional weight can be devastating.
The concept of starting fresh emotionally each day was depicted in two recent new movies. The first was entitled 50 First Datesand the second was Notebook.
50 First Datesis the story of Marine biologist Henry Roth. He finds the perfect woman, Lucy Whitmore, and falls in love with her. Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore star in this delightful romantic comedy.
Due to a traffic accident a year earlier, Lucy suffers from a rare brain disorder that wipes her memory clean every night. The day after she meets Henry for the first time, they see each other again at the same cafwhere she has breakfast each morning. She cannot remember having met him. Thus, every day Henry has to concoct new and clever ways to meet her and get her to fall in love with him again.
In commenting about the film, Drew Barrymore said, I thought that a story about a man who has to make his girl fall in love with him every day as if each day is new, because in her world it is, was the best thing Ive ever heard. I just love the idea of someone trying to make somebody fall in love with you every day. I think that should always be a goal. Its a beautiful practice and a beautiful message.
What if we took that beautiful message and applied it to our lives and to our closest relationships? What if we pretended that each day we would do everything possible to make that special person in our lives fall in love with us all over again?
What if we looked at each day as the first day of the rest of our lives? What if we pretended that there were no resentments in our baggage?
The second movie, The Notebook,touches on a similar theme. This is an amazing and wonderful love story told by a man who is reading from his faded notebook to a woman in a nursing home. The inscriptions in the notebook follow the lives of two North Carolina teens that come from different worlds.
Allie is brought up in an antebellum mansion as part of a wealthy southern family. Noah and his father live in a little house out in the woods and his future prospects arent bright.
All of that doesnt stop them from falling in love and spending a wonderful summer together before they are separated, first by her parents and then by World War II. Trying to keep in touch, Noah writes a letter to Allie every day for a year. Her mother, feeling that Noah is less than what her daughter deserves, hides those letters.
When the war is over, things are different as Noah returns. Thinking Noah was never coming back, Allie is now engaged to a successful businessman. Noah starts living alone with his memories in a 200-year-old house that he begins to restore.
When Allie sees an article in the local paper about Noahs beautiful renovation of the old house, she knows that shes got to see him and make a decision about the path her life and her love must take.
Without giving away too much of this movie, because I highly encourage you to see it, lets go back to the woman in the nursing home. She has Alzheimers and the older man who reads Noah and Allies story to her obviously cares about her a great deal.
As time and her disease progress, she becomes more removed from reality. He keeps reading to her. Then small miracles begin to happen. Although most doctors say it cant be, the readings from the notebook trigger some memories in her mind. Even though the memories may last for only a few minutes, they are real and they bring her great joy.
The old man reading to her the story from the notebook, over and over again, is another example of new beginnings, of bringing pleasant memories back to our minds.
What if we would only focus on the pleasant moments from the past and pretend that the others dont exist? Would we appreciate the current day more? Would we be kinder and more loving to others? I believe we would.
I was very touched by these two movies and their similar themes. Every day can be new if we see it that way. Perhaps we should start keeping a journal of the good, loving, precious moments and read that notebook whenever we need a new beginning.
An Affirmation of New Beginnings
I look at every day as a new beginning an opportunity to focus on the positive, loving aspects of my life.
Article reproduced with permission from Boaz Rauchwerger. You may reprint any of these articles in any publication or Web site so long as you credit Boaz Rauchwerger as the author and include this Web site address, www.Boazpower.com.