You Are What You Believe.

I want to tell you something.

This is going to sound crazy, possibly even heretical.

But…

STOP.

Stop what, you ask?

Stop trying.

Let me back up a moment.

I’m not advocating you just up and drop all your responsibilities to be a gypsy in the desert (though, if you can make that work for you, by all means).

I’m telling you to stop trying to be you.

Stop trying to earn your place in this world.

Stop trying to prove you belong here.

Because the truth is: you already do.

You are born with an immense amount of potential and power.

But most of us, myself included, are perpetual forgetters of those simple truths.

Do you ever wonder why it is you wake up each morning and repeatedly do things you hate?

Why you feel like you strive to be better at this or fight to break something you just never seem to shake?

Why you eventually feel like you may as well give in to the things you know must be true of yourself?

Well, I do.

Moreover, I have.

But I don’t, anymore.

Because, at the end of the day, what you believe about yourself and the world around you matters.

It matters infinitely more than you likely realize.

Guess what?

If you wake up in the morning believing “I’m just a screw up,” or “I’m a whore,” or “I can’t do this,” or “I’ll never be ________,” that’s exactly what you’ll be.

You will act like what you believe a screw up is or a whore is or a failure is or just like this person or not enough like that person, or whatever it is you’re fighting against.

Now, you may be thinking, “I don’t wake up thinking those thoughts; I don’t really believe these lies about myself.”

But let me ask you this, what do your actions say?

Do you do things you hate that you can’t seem to break away from?

Do you go to a job you hate but never make strives to change your situation?

Do you feel the need to one-up those around you, just so you don’t get thrown to the curb?

Then, I’d venture to say, something you believe about yourself or the world is amiss.

The world will tell you, you can’t

They will tell you, you are a screw up, that you were born into a broken situation, so you will inevitably remain in said situation.

That you struggle with this addiction or that character flaw and you will never be able to change.

But I’m here to tell you: that’s all a bunch of bullshit.

You are capable.

You are not a screw up.

You are not your affliction.

And you have the power to change your situation.

Try something for me.

Sure, it seems silly, but what have you got to lose?

Take some time, right now, to think about your life.

Are you happy with how things are?

Are you struggling?

Are you striving?

If that’s you, just like it’s been me, won’t you shift your perspective a little?

Tell yourself the truth about who you are.

Start believing you are already enough, that you already have the power to change your situation, to stop believing all the terrible things you believe you are.

Change begins with faith.

Faith inspires others.

Belief in someone, belief in yourself, will cause you and those around you to accomplish far more than you could ever dream.

And that is priceless.

I dare you to change what you believe.

I dare you to stop believing lies about yourself.

I dare you to believe you can and you will, not you can’t and you won’t.

Because you will always end up exactly where you believe you will.

Holding Onto Pearls.

People who wonder if the glass is half full or half empty miss the point.

The glass is refillable.

That is the point.

We all have something we hold onto.

At least one thing we don’t want to entertain losing.

Even the thought of slightly loosening our grip can send us into a state of confusion and anxiety.

But what if I told you, when you let it go, it comes back to you?

Inevitably, every empty thing will be filled.

Again and again and again.

One of the fine arts of life is learning to be content while we are full, content while we are empty, and content while we are being filled.

Because sometimes, we need to be emptied.

Or there is no capacity to be filled.

It’s like when you find a pearl.

It’s a fake pearl, but you don’t care.

It’s YOUR pearl, and that’s what matters.

You treat it as if it’s real, showing it off to whoever will look.

But deep down, you know it isn’t real.

And you almost don’t care.

Part of you would rather have this thing which looks and almost even feels like a pearl than have an actual pearl.

Because having an actual pearl would mean you would have to give up your fake pearl.

It would mean being empty handed for a little while.

It would mean trusting that everything which is emptied is then filled again.

And that’s difficult.

We don’t want to be empty, even if just for a while.

Especially when we can’t quite describe what it is that’s compelling us to see the possibility of a different ending.

Even if it means letting go of something good for something great.

Too many people hold onto their fake pearls their entire lives, not daring to set down what is good so they are able to hold what is great.

But as hard as I might try to ignore that small (sometimes colossal) tug to set down these often beautiful replicas of something truly majestic, I simply can’t.

And that honestly sucks sometimes.

I don’t want to be empty handed.

I don’t want to feel the weight of something missing.

I don’t want to yearn for a wholeness I’ve yet to experience.

But I do.

And as much as I wish I could, I can’t just be like those people who cradle the good things, ignoring the possibility of something great.

Sometimes, this makes me feel defective.

Why can’t I just accept what other people accept?

But one thing I’ve come to see is that every time I’ve let something good go when I didn’t want to but knew it was time to, something else has come along.

And I have faith that eventually what comes along will be great.

And it will finally be mine to hold.

At least for a while.

Shards and Pieces.

“Sometimes, you have to self-destruct in order to self-discover, and understand that the only person you have to let go… is you.”

R.M. Drake

Wow.

Like really, wow.

How many times do we have to hear that before we’ll actually give into it?

If we’re being brutally, magically honest with ourselves, we are unequivocally terrified to examine the fragments of thread holding ourselves together.

I may not be particularly old.

I may not be particularly wise.

But in my short time on this planet, I’ve observed something which seems to govern the entire human condition:

If you desire to live life to the maximum capacity, you must lose it.

And I don’t mean you need to end your life or crumble up all your idiosyncrasies and cast them into the winds.

But you truly must be willing to (and actually, at times) tear off pieces of who you’ve always thought you are and smash them on the ground.

Then, you must purge your mind of these preconceived notions of who you’re “supposed to be” and never look back at the shards.

Because who you think you’re supposed to be and who you are will almost always differ.

And that’s okay.

But I think it’s difficult for us to see this.

Because we’ve drown our own beauty in the well-wishes of others, in the contradictory expectations of those who claim to love us and those who claim to own us.

We’ve allowed their visions for our lives to wash in and {often} overtake our own visions.

While the visions of others may not be inherently bad and may not even be intentionally selfish, they are.

They are given one life, just as you are, just as I am.

And except for rare instances, it is not their job to see for someone else.

Which means, they have no right to cast their wishes for your life onto you, no matter how well intentioned they may be.

I say all this to say: perhaps it is time.

Time to look at those threads holding your dreams together.

To look at the expectations you have for yourself.

The dreams, the fears, the things which make you feel despair, anger, guilt, pride, joy.

And look them in both eyes with unveiled sight, proclaiming what they truthfully are.

Because if they’re your dreams, your guidelines, your messiness, that’s perfectly wonderful.

But if they’re someone else’s restrictions, someone else’s dreams, someone else’s messes you continue to clean, you need to stop.

You need to find your own sight.

Your eyes are your own.

Use them.

When you do, you empower others to do the same.

And you discover that the pieces you are required to lose in this process were never really meant to fit into your skin to begin with. 

Lighting the Dark.

You open your eyes, but all you see is the dark.

The air gradually becomes thicker, as your lungs struggle to expand.

There is soot in the air, coating your skin thicker with each toxic breath.

You begin to grasp at the darkness around you only to find you’re encapsulated.

Walls surround you.

There are no doors.

There are no foot holes.

There are no windows.

There is only deepest dark and loneliest alone.

How did you get here?

You used to see light. 

There were once steps lining this space, allowing you to come and go as you pleased.

Then, the air was clean, fragrant, even.

You had friends.

People who would bring joy to your small area, light lights, open curtains, feast on laughter.

But all of that’s gone.

You begin to cry.

A few tears trickle into giant, ugly sobs.

And the echoes drown out the heartbeat you’ve long ago forgotten is your own.

You sob until you are numb.

Until you no longer see the dark or attempt to climb out of your trap.

You lie down in the puddle of tears you’ve just created. 

When you finally stand up, drained of the last sliver of humanity you had, you think strongly about sitting back down and dying.

It would be a slow death, but it would be a death tens of thousands before you have accepted.

But something inside that darkness is telling you to stand on your tip-toes.

When you do, you push your hand up and touch the top of what’s containing you.

The faintest gleam of hope stirs in you.

Your eyes widen.

You now take both hands and feel the ceiling above.

Before you even have time to think about it, you’re pushing up with some form of strength you didn’t remember you had, throwing away the piece that just held you captive for longer than you care to remember.

And then you see hands.

Hundreds of hands, reaching out to you, to pull you from your pit.

Once you’re out of the ground, you remember how you got there.

You built that pit. 

Even surrounded by all these outstretched hands, you dug yourself a nice little hole, jumped in, and pulled a lid over your hiding spot.

So no one would find you.

--------------------

Friends.

This is what life is like when we do not allow people in.

Before I allowed people into my thoughts, into what I thought were such dark places no one would survive even a small glimpse, I felt a lot like what I described above.

I didn’t remember how I’d gotten to that place, but I knew I hadn’t always been there.

I knew I didn’t want to stay, but I felt like there was no way out.

And that’s how darkness wants us to feel.

Like, sure, we may have had something good before, but now, we’re in the dark, and we had better learn to like it, since there’s no way out.

But I promise you, that’s a lie.

There’s a way out. 

Sharing the precious things on our minds and in our hearts can be difficult.

Feelings of shame, embarrassment, and fear of what another may think often keeps us backed into our own self-made caves, cowering in and clinging to the darkness.

But you know what?

All of us have a few of those caves.

And I wonder what would happen if we got brave and brought a friend to our secret spots?

I think we would be more likely to look at each other and remember that we’re all fighting our own battles, every single day.

And we all just need someone to come in, see our darkness, give us a giant hug, and help us open our curtains. 

Crusade.

Something struck me this morning.

I’ve been paying attention to some of the recent news stories about the bombings around the world.

Someone commented about how we were 700+ years past the crusades.

(I did not fact check this number, but the actual number is fairly moot.)

And I get what he was trying to say.

He feels like we’ve evolved as a species, gotten to and settled at a point where we must be beyond such childish, ignorant behavior as to blow ourselves up and take lives with us because we have some minor disagreements.

It would be nice to be able to commend that point of view.

But it’s a lie.

Even the kindest, most moral people have traces of death in their hearts.

And we want to say we’ve evolved past this, but truly, we’ve spent thousands of years improving the ways we do things, not necessarily doing new things.

Sure, we can mass produce food, communicate to someone halfway across the world in seconds, and drive thirty miles in thirty minutes.

We can save more lives with our advances in technology, plan for the future, and effectively kill large amounts of people in seconds.

Have our needs evolved?

Have our basic desires changed?

Absolutely, they haven’t.

We are now simply able to fulfill said needs and desires “better.”

So, who’s to say our hearts, our minds have evolved past any point?

Especially on a global scale.

That’s ignorant, at best. Arrogant, even.

There are still millions (perhaps billions) of people living in circumstances where they are daily denied education, adequate nutrition, protective shelter, even clean water.

People who are never taught that bombing someone when they take your milk money is not the answer.

People who are encouraged to die so they take up less resources.

People who don’t understand they have a life, and that life is worth living.

So.

Have we “evolved” past our intellectual ignorance of the crusading days?

I don’t believe so.

We’ve only gotten more adept at hiding our motives and quickly fulfilling our desires.

We are all still undeniably, one thousand percent human.