Greenlights

by Matthew McConaughey

Greenlights can also be disguised as yellow and red lights. A caution, a detour, a thoughtful pause, an interruption, a disagreement, indigestion, sickness, and pain. A full stop, a jackknife, an intervention, failure, suffering, a slap in the face, death. We don’t like yellow and red lights. They slow us down or stop our flow. They’re hard. They’re a shoeless winter. They say no, but sometimes give us what we need.

My parents taught me that I was named my name for a reason. They taught me not to hate. To never say I can’t. To never lie.

“if all that I would want to do, would be to sit and talk to you… would you listen?” It was from a poem by Ann Ashford.

Knowing who we are is hard. Eliminate who we’re not first, and we’ll find ourselves where we need to be.

We want to be loved, have a family, community, have something to look forward to. These basic needs are present in all socioeconomic and cultural civilizations.

I think that’s what we all want. To believe in and be believed in.

When we truly latch on to the fact that we are going to die at some point in time, we have more presence in this one.

I learn, and then begin just being who I am, and doing what I do, for me—not for anyone else and for everyone else at the same time.

How do we know when we cross a truth or a truth crosses us? I believe the truth is all around us all the time. The anonymous angels, the butterflies, the answers, are always right there, but we don’t always identify, grasp, hear, see, or access them—because we’re not in the right place to. We have to make a plan.

God, when I cross the truth, give me the awareness to receive it the consciousness to recognize it the presence to personalize it the patience to preserve it and the courage to live it