My husband, Grit, has a new friend at the gym. The friend is a personal success coach who spends hours a day on the telephone helping people work out their problems. He is able to encourage them in ways to help them succeed and use their skills to their advantage.
For some reason the friend, Dr. Jim Naccarato, thinks Grit is very wise and full of ideas, so he likes to glean from him. Grit comes home from the gym so happy I’m thinking it must be the other way around.
Isn’t that what life is about, sharing ideas and finding encouraging, helpful friends to help us find our way?
Some people seek answers by going to a fortune teller or a mystic; others judiciously read a horoscope. For me, I believe in a loving Heavenly Father who guides me.
The thing is, no matter where we search or what we do, the final decisions are made by us. It is our choices, our wishes, our dreams and how we carry them out that will eventually make our path known to us.
Sometimes we get insights from books and plays — truisms that remind us of what is important. Hale Center Theater in Orem is currently featuring the musical “Into the Woods" by Stephen Sondheim, taken from the book by James Lapine. It’s a worthwhile evening. The show runs through Aug. 15.
As the play progresses, it is more about reality than it is about fantasy. It becomes a morality story that stays in our minds after reminding us to “Be Careful What You Wish For” — a title of one of the show’s songs.
Using a clever mix of several fairy tales, the first half lets everyone get their wish, with the second half showing the consequences of those wishes.
In the title song, the woods are a metaphor for life when we are told:
Into the woods — you have to grope,
But that’s the way you learn to cope,
Into the woods to find there’s hope
Of getting through the journey.
When the characters are ambivalent, as in the case of Cinderella, their choices show their indecision. Not every choice is good, and there are consequences.
Another song titled "Children Will Listen" includes, "Careful the things you say, children will listen" and is a reminder of a responsibility to think about what we do and say — especially to children.
Besides the themes of growing up and parent and children relationships, there are also themes of morality and accepting responsibility. Near the end, all the surviving characters seem to be alone and the baker’s wife sings to her husband who is left with their child:
Sometimes people leave you
Halfway through the wood.
Do not let it grieve you,
No one leaves for good.
You are not alone.
No one is alone.
Hold him to the light now,
Let him see the glow.
Things will be all right now.
Tell him what you know …
After passing through the hard experiences, they blame each other and then, with better understanding, the characters regroup and find a way to go on. They recognize they all made mistakes and realize to exist and survive they need each other. Even though they couldn’t escape responsibility for the past, they still had strengths and as a community could survive.
We don’t live in a Disney World where giants live. We live in a world where there are people and groups who occasionally spew their hate-filled vitriol onto the Earth. We live in a world where selfish parents desert their children and selfish children disappoint their parents.
But we also live in a world where there are many more good people than bad. There are people who care and share their time, either as friends or professionals.
We may not be perfect, but we can still strive, with a little help from our friends, to make good wishes a reality.
Email: sasy273@gmail.com