Filed under: life
So, I was going to write this uplifting blog about how well my life has been going lately. New apartment, a fresh start, a good job that pays me to write, relationships that are strengthening. I was prepared to fix up a few statements about how blessed I am, about how faith-affirming it is to look around at your beautiful life and feel God in every sparkling inch of it.
But I realized that nothing’s really changed in the past few weeks.
(Now, that is not to say that I am not blessed, or that my recent good fortune isn’t because of God, because of course I am, and of course it is!)
What’s changed is my attitude.
I recently wrote a blog about happiness, and how it’s less of a thing that lights upon us as it is something that we choose to be and to spread. I found it wasn’t something I had really been living by recently. In fact, I had been arranging my moods in quite the opposite direction–almost relishing in my nervousness and worrying because it’s…easier.
Taking a trip home this past weekend allowed me to pull away from my life and work and relationships in Chicago and evaluate them at a distance (oh, perspective). I realized things had been going well because I had decided to look at them positively.
I guess there’s no real point to this blog except to say, hey, I’m living the things I write about. Eating my words and all that.
I’m a people pleaser.
Really, I think a lot of us are. We want to be accepted, acknowledged and congratulated. We want to know that we’re “in,” that we’re doing okay in the eyes of others. We crave this type of approval. It’s part of the reason why the majority of us do the things we do–chase down impossible degrees at outstanding universities, work 60-hour work weeks, force ourselves to follow ridiculous diets, even go to church. These sorts of behaviors say things about our moral fibers and press an invisible stamp of approval to our foreheads: I’M SUCCESSFUL AND INTELLIGENT AND HARD-WORKING AND NURTURING AND…
What IS that?!
There is no need for any of us to feel as if we must answer to anyone! In order to pursue passion and happiness and fulfillment and spirituality and self-honesty, we need to be prepared to disappoint. It is inevitable.
(I think it goes without saying, but the only One who truly matters is GOD!)
Very recently, I’ve done some disappointing and quite honestly, it’s tearing me apart. I can’t stand to be in the shadows of someone else’s disapproving glare. I want to be impressing and perfect and…well, I want to be a lot of things I can’t. Not if I’m being true to my own heart.
Letting people down hurts a lot. But the alternative is like…forcing your size-9 feet into a very beautiful pair of expensive size-8 shoes. It may seem like it’s a good idea. It may seem like it could turn out okay. But it can’t, and it won’t. It doesn’t fit.
We can only, always, be ourselves. Our own hearts are all we have to offer.
