Life Scripts

Early in life as children we develop a "life script" of the way we think our life ought to go. "Elementary school. Junior high school. High school. Go to college where you will find your future spouse. Graduate and get a job. Marry your fiance. Buy a house. Have 2.3 children. Live happily ever after." (What I call the "Leave It To Beaver" script, after that old TV show which I've never seen but I assume it promotes that kind of 1950's ideal. [2.3 children is supposedly the average number of children American families have.]) Then as we live our life we discover at some point life deviates from the script. The secret to happiness is accepting this deviation and improvising a new "life script." We just make it up as we go along and we do our best.

If you can't rewrite your life script you'll end up like Miss Havisham in the Charles Dickens classic story Great Expectations. As a young woman, Miss Havisham was jilted by her fiancé 20 minutes before her nine o'clock wedding. She went insane, and spent the rest of her life wandering around her house in a faded wedding dress, keeping a decaying feast on her table, and surrounding herself with clocks stopped at twenty minutes to nine. Now there's a lady who couldn't rewrite her life script and move on with her life.

So just improvise as you go along and you'll be fine.

There was a book on Life Scripts written in 1973 by Eric Berne titled What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (At the end of the book he apologizes for the title which has little to do with the book.) Numerous used copies are availabe for $1 at www.abebooks.com

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