Soulshine

“I hit her! I wanted to make her laugh, and she wouldn’t laugh. I wanted to make her like me, and she wouldn’t like me. Oh, I’ve failed… I’ve failed!” Liliom (Charles Farrell), Liliom (1930) Liliom is an unfortunate character. He’s a carnival barker who comes to a sad ending as he dies of self-inflicted knife wounds before the birth of his first child. In the afterlife, Liliom meets God and God asks Liliom what his greatest regret is. Liliom tells God his greatest regret is having physically struck his wife. Then Liliom begs God to give him a second chance; to allow him to return to life on earth. He wants to make his past wrongs into rights and he wants to see his only child. God shakes his head and tells Liliom that past experience has taught him that people who are allowed to return to earth simply end up repeating their past. But God is willing to give Liliom a chance. God tells Liliom he must go to the underworld first for 10 years. Afterwards, he will be al...

I can look back over my life and see a pattern of my past becoming my present. I guess it’s not surprising since we humans like to stay in our comfort zones. We stick with what we know, and we rarely take the time to question whether or not what we know is good for us. If your past keeps catching up with you, it’s time to discover what it is trying to teach you. There’s a reason why it’s haunting you. Codependents are very good at playing the Blame Game, and I think this is a primary reason why we end up repeating our past. The Blame Game is a protection mechanism that allows us to deflect all of our faults onto others. By using the Blame Game, we focus solely on the bad behavior of others. It enables us to believe that the other person is 100 per cent to blame for all of the problems in a relationship because it enables us to turn a blind eye toward everything that we ourselves have done wrong. After all, to blame others is to pretend to be faultless. It’s easy to see wh...