XLI
I am a heavy soul, easily wounded and quick to withdraw. My mind and heart are perpetually occupied with accomplishing something, though my hands are often held. I think and I think and I think and nothing changes, but how I see the world and myself. How I am perceived remains the same, though different from soul to soul, place to place, heart to heart. My attention and drive remain a hinderance to most, as does my overbearing ego. I am apparently difficult to "deal" with. Today is quiet, but my head is bustling with the traffic of thoughts needing a destination. On this, the longest "day" of the year, there are not enough hours in the day, or days in the year, or years in this waning existence.
One thing that hit me hard yesterday, sitting naked on a random boat that washed up on my last-day-of-spring beach, Facing West from California's Shores, was a kind of stubbornness of self. I am who I am, and there is not much of me left, yet most invest a lot of their time and energy into telling me that I'm wrong, implicating a need to change. I like who I am; I worked pretty hard to be me, this me, and I have wasted too much of my life trying to be what others want me to be.
Can you just appreciate who I am, and who I am not?
Can you accept that I'm not who you want me to be?
Can I read anything without taking on the voice of the author?
Can you accept that you don't need to please anyone other than yourself? Others can't "accept" (weird, powerful word) you until you accept yourself, grasshopper. Yes, that sounds narcissistic on the surface but in reality once you get to that place (I'm still trying but getting closer) you'll be able to understand that "you can't please everyone all the time" is perhaps one of the wisest things to internalize. If a person can go through life and honor that important oath all physicians take--first do no harm--then you've done a pretty fine job of being a biped mammal. The rest is, as they say, icing on the cake, but what do I really know? I know that at some point we all realize that we really don't know shit about what's important because we're too dogged down with the shit that doesn't really matter in the long run. It's only a movie so enjoy the popcorn and, to quote Warren Zevon, "every sandwich."
ReplyDeleteThat little face shows primal acceptance of who you are.
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