Every morning presents us with a new slate on which to write our life. Each of us is given the slate and a piece of chalk. Throughout the day we add to our slate, writing the story of who we are for that 24-hour period.

The good news is that every morning we have a clean slate on which to impress our life.

If there is any bad news in this, it might be that we also, sometimes unwittingly or unknowingly, but often, I fear, purposefully, are making our chalk marks on other people's lives at the same time, and they on ours. This is not always bad news but it doesn't take much of an imagination to see how it might be.

Part of our own daily slates are given over to others, not necessarily on purpose but because their chalk is wide and is applied with a heavy hand and overpowers what we ourselves are attempting to write. Our little chalk board can be filled with others' thoughts and opinions so much so that we hardly have room to write our own story.

This is a travesty.

No one should write our story for us.

I like it when friends cross my pathway and make a few positive marks on my slate. In editing my story each evening before bed, I like having their impressions on my daily activities. I hope I have made some happy marks on their daily slate so when they think of me it is with fondness (and also when they think of themselves).

However it is what I allow to be placed on my daily slate that counts and what I place there myself. Each of us is able to set up a Star Wars-like barrier to prevent the negative influences from attaching themselves to our slate. The barrier is not as effective for those internal negative influences that we write ourselves.

This is why we need to choose carefully how we live our lives...because we are writing our stories.

Every person is a screenplay being written. There are characters and plot, crises and resolutions and sometimes, often, happily ever afters.

And that's what I think about it.