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Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:
for a long time i have been beating myself internally. telling myself: you cant have it all. you cant do it all. just be grateful for what you have. act humble. or people will take it away from you. and your life will be worse than it is now. you dont want people to think you are arrogant. or better than 'they' are. cause they will punish you for it.
but then. like a flash of lightening over the ocean. i got it.
you *can* do it all. you *can* have it all. as long as you dont give a fuck about social approval.
this is freedom.
ok. maybe i can't do it all. but i damn well can do a lot more than i am right now. i can spend my life discovering more and more what i can do and can have and can love and can experience. until the day i die.
we have this idea, steeped in fear, that if we step too far outside of social approval, we will not be able to survive, because we have been told that our safety net can only be achieved by the approval of others. of 'them'.
and its funny. once i stop giving a fuck what other people think. a lot of the stuff that i thought was impt to me, stuff that i thought i wanted…i stop caring about. it turns out that *i* didnt want that stuff. what i wanted was the insurance that i thought it was going to bring me. the safety net. the social acceptance. the idea that i was advertising to the world with 'stuff' that i was worth protecting from the vagaries of life.
so, we take our energy and our time and our life and spend it doing what others want us to do, following the social scripts, and in this way we feel assured that we have our safety.
well, safety is an illusion.
imagine, for a second, if we just lived as if there is no such thing as safety. what would we do differently?
see, lately, i have been focusing more and more on creating webs of support that support me as i support them, as i am–the authentic me, and not me, as others tell me to be–the false me.
and what i have learned is that it takes just as much effort to be authentic in the moment, and vulnerably authentic, to be real even when others wont approve, as it does to be false and giving into my fears of being abandoned, alone, unsupported.
when i am authentic i attract authenticity from others. not from everyone. but then most folks are afraid of their own freedom and their own shadows.
so who is this authentic me? this authentic me is living and responding to the present moment. this authentic me contradicts herself because she is full of opposites, full of multitudes, full of paradox. this authentic me often appears crazy to the outside world. this me changes constantly because the world changes constantly. this me is paying attention to what i am paying attention to.
the present moment is all i have. and it is everything. and i can have and do it all. as long as i am not making my decisions based upon illusions of other people liking or agreeing with what i do or who i am. but upon the truth. right now. right here.
(picture of a three headed skeleton draped in cloth. sorry, but i dont have the attribution for this image, but its not mine…)
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