Trust30 – #29 – I'm Just a Soul whose Intentions are Good…

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The prompt for this talks about posting an embarrassing picture of yourself online. Like the one I just put up. Look at that hair. The baldness. The unsightly… is that a chin? Are you sure? It just sort of… gently wanders town into the neck, doesn't it? Egads.

I'm not going to compare myself to Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, or (heaven help us) Jesus. There's really only one person I can compare myself to… and that's my own vision of who I SHOULD be.

And you thought your potential audience was bad…

If it's perhaps escaped anyone paying attention, I am a rather harsh critic of myself. Everything and everyone else gets a pretty fair amount of leeway from me. The only one that doesn't… the one that's to blame for everything… is me. Who else is there? Within reason, taking responsibility, accountability and ownership of yourself and your life is absolutely the right thing to do. But blaming yourself for all that is wrong or troubling or disappointing in your life? If only I'd done this… or that… if only I'd studied harder, worked out more, etc… well, it's a fantastic method for completely discouraging any positive movement or action on your part.

So it's time to give the internal critic the boot. I am going to do my best. And if that doesn't work out, then it doesn't work out. C'est la vie. At some point you have to give yourself some leeway. You're only human. That means that you have unlimited potential, but it also means that you're imperfect, that you're going to screw up. And you need to be okay with that.

Going back to the analogy of the path, the rod, and the tree, if we're too scared of messing up, we never take a step forward to where we want to be. We never approach happiness. If we're so convinced of our own competence that we never move, then we might as well not be in the path. The path is meant to be walked. The rod is meant as a guide. The tree is meant to be reached, and the fruit thereof is meant to be enjoyed. It's time to let in some light, forgive yourself, and leave it be.

Press on, peeps. Press on.