How I Actually Act!

This photo says it all. It is a daily battle, fighting how I think I should be and how I am. For years, I was the first person through and through. I said the right things, did the right things. The problem was who I was looking at for the definition of 'right'. Raised in the heart of the Bible belt, my faith is close to my heart but I'm not talking about the 10 commandments or the 613 some odd laws set forth in Leviticus. I am talking about the stereotypes we think we have to follow. I am talking about the part of the social code that gets caught in our minds and twists into some deranged fact. We do this before we know we've done it. We take pieces of this and that and thus create an order we feel forced to follow. (The only one putting this demand on us is, in fact, ourselves.) 

I am lucky to have parents that never pushed me to be someone I wasn't. They were content to let me run in the yard talking to imagery friends. They were fine that I was shy around people. They were cool that I got a B in 5th grade. But I wasn't. Yeah, I was mature for my age. Due to childhood illness, I had to grow up differently, faster. Being 15 years younger than my brother, I spent a great deal of time around other adults. But it was me that pushed me...for some cockamamie reason (a reason created from a series of synapses that decided to fire at odd times) I thought I had to be the smart one, the responsible one, the strong one, the put together one. I pushed me to be who I thought I was supposed to be.

Now don’t get me wrong, you have to strong at times, mature, responsible and logical but I was taking it to the extreme.

You can be mature and still be you. You can be professional and still be yourself. You can be strong, responsible, grown up and still have that fire and imagination that fueled your childhood escapades.

A friend told me today that perfection is not the absence of flaws but being complete. I like this concept because perfection is unattainable but wholeness as a person…is hard as hell but totally doable.