What do "The Life Aquatic" and Babies Have to Do with Trust?
I've been sick the past couple of days and it's given me time to watch a few movies, rest and think about a few things. One of the movies that I watched was the 2004 film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou with Bill Murray in the lead as the oceanographer Steve Zissou. Although it was supposed to be funny, I didn't think it was. I thought it was a really good story of people trying to create connections with one another--even though they fumbled along the way.
Isn't that the way it seems in all our lives? We want to connect with others--or maybe we're even really afraid to connect because we've never been successful--and we just don't know how. And yet that's what we as humans truly want--this connection with one another that creates trust and allows us to have the love we truly want in our lives.
In the film, Steve Zissou never wanted to be a dad and yet found himself faced with a man who just might be his son. In the process of learning how to connect with his supposed son, he learned how to connect with members of the crew of his boat, his arch-oceanographic rival and even his estranged wife. Steve opened his heart and found a soft spot from where he could connect.
How great if we could all do that with the people in our lives!
Another dvd that I watched while I was not feeling well was a documentary called "What Babies Want." It's a beautiful explanation of how much babies remember and absorb from their time in utero to their birth experience--as well as a reminder to treat these beings with great love and respect from the very beginning of their lives.
According to the info in this documentary, trust begins in utero but especially moments after birth. When the baby is allowed to make eye contact with his/her mother or father immediately, the capacity to trust in life is created. When the baby is whisked away for procedures, learning to trust is delayed and may never happen.
Learning to trust starts with communication between the mom and baby in utero and continues as dad and other family members begin communicating from their hearts with this new being.
What does all of this have to do with you and your relationships?
This information shows us what can go right--to create a trusting, well-balanced human being--and what can go wrong--to create a fearful person who has closed themselves off from love.
According to the documentary, no matter what our birth experience was, we can learn new ways to trust and open our hearts. One of those ways is to repattern our birth in a process workshop like the one that I have done with Dr. Ray Castellino. I have gone through two of his process workshops and found them to be invaluable to repatterning old beliefs that I wasn't even aware of that had been holding me back.
You can also make the heart-felt decision to "soften" to those around you and begin to allow love in--like the Bill Murray character did in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." If you do, you can never know how many lives will be touched and changed--as well as how good you can feel.
I invite you today to find the soft place in your heart from where you can begin to create stronger connections with others.
Susie Collins
