Recently I was talking with a friend. During our conversation, the topic of time was discussed. As we spoke about how fast time passes, my mind drifted. Time does march on and waits for no one. Seconds minutes, days, weeks, months, and year’s blend together to define our lives. Although the splendor of time is meant to reveal our creative energy, various messages can hinder and even impede the flow of our uniqueness. The impact of those messages seeks to undermine all that is good and precious.
These are the rules defined, sublime. Read my mind, dance to my tune and all will be fine. Never mind who you are, only dance to my rhyme. If you chose not to follow my lead, rejection and abandonment will surely succeed. You will then experience the dread of annihilation. You will have anxiety, apprehension and insecurity. You will believe your life does not matter. Your individuality, not important, and your essence of little value. But if you approval seek, people please, and vicariously live all will be well with your soul.
Individuation and empowerment lie dormant, while the goal to appease the message becomes pronounced. Through attending to these pernicious messages, small amounts of emotional arsenic are ingested. The insidious nature of this process often goes unchecked, until it is simply too late. Like frogs placed in a pot of water on a stove, their life is slowly drained as the temperature increases to a boil.
I allowed the rules defined to dictate how I lived my life for many years. I traded my judgment for the often-jaded opinions of other people. I sought to fulfill expectations in an attempt to define my self-worth, value, and self-esteem. In the process, I lost me. Through my process, I began to accept reality. I am the only one who can be me. Individuation came with a price and I counted the cost. I experienced a grieving process as I adopted a new way of living. Reclaiming parts of myself that I had discarded, in the process of approval seeking and people pleasing, provided both joy and sadness. My true self was emerging, while the false self was discarded. The process has been hard at times, but little by little I have discovered who I am in this life.
I will end with one of my favorite quotes by Pablo Picasso.
My mother said to me, “If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.” Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso”.
Be who you are in life and your beauty will shine to those who have eyes to see. You are a gift to your world!
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Only recently have I discovered that it was my false self I was operating from all those years of trying to live up to the roles I had chosen in life. I am in the process of unearthing those sacred parts of me that were buried along the way and reclaiming them – better late than never. I love the things you write about – it is a real treasure chest of precious jewels.
WOW! This one really hit reality with me! As God continues to use your gift of the clarity of writing about things words for most of us find it impossible to even think about, “out” of your mind it comes and really help our spirits soar and want to continue to read each and every word! I just thank you you so much for devoting your life so we can be soothed or feel like soaring just because there is someone who feels the situation and feelings and CARES! Again I thank you for your “treasure chest” Craig and sharing with us. It just keeps getting better and I feel better about myself and not so lonesome with my feelings.This is a very special one to many of us I am sure!