It’s All About Me

Life… it’s all about me—me, and what I want. No one wants to admit that. Why? Because we don’t want anyone to think we’re self-centered.

Google synonyms for self-centered. It has four pages of like words for those of us who are all about ourselves. Yet, we abhor others who are like that, you know, egocentric, pompous, highfalutin, inconsiderate, conceited, selfish, thankless, vainglorious, ungrateful, egotistical, self-serving. But if I spot those things in others, the things I don’t like about other people, the behaviors that irritate me, the ways I don’t want to show up, I realized I’ve got those things in me. Not only do I have them in me, I have them outside my circle because I don’t want to be seen that way. People might not like me. Acting like that won’t make me look good. Being that way is not nice. It’s a slippery slope. It’s slightly less slippery if you recognize your disowned parts, your shadows, at least then you can dance with them a bit.

Some go: “I’m not all about me, I’m all about you,” or “I’m all about this,” or “I’m all about that.” Yeah, right. The rock stars in the news these days who are not all about themselves are Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama, but they’re a tad more evolved than most, in my opinion anyway, and goodness knows I’ve plenty of opinions.

I could write a book about me, or maybe blog about me. Actually, I already have. I’m perfectly clear I’m all about me. A little tweaked about it actually, probably because my mother wasn’t all about me. She was all about her. The irony of it though was that her narcissism and self-centeredness had nothing to do with me; her relationship with me wasn’t about me at all, not me, or my value. My timing was bad and she was simply done having children by the time I came along, though as far as I can tell, my siblings didn’t fare well with her either. She was struggling to keep her own life together and I played a minor role in her movie, more like a walk-on part actually. Peter, my acupuncturist, once told me that I chose my mother; I about fell off the table, laughing, “Oh no, no, no, no, no. No, I was in the wrong line; I’m certain I picked the wrong one!”

But enough about me. The stories I write are about all of us; we are bound by our humanity and we all have “stuff.” People like my writing (some have even told me, so it must be true) because they get another slant on this crazy thing called life, or they see something about themselves, about their own upbringing and families. My reflections are not so much about ME, but about WE. However, as all roads lead to home, maybe they are all about me.