I’m sure there are many guilt-filled persons walking around who have not allowed themselves to be persecuted in the court of public opinion, but who have gone ahead and condemned themselves and exacted punishment. Guilt is a burden that many find hard to bear, but many carry. The thought that “I made a mistake” or “I did something wrong”, can be the nail that seals a life of misery from which a person can never recover.
So many are so concerned with doing good and making sure they toe the line, they eventually have a nervous breakdown and destroy that image constructed by one foolish act – at least this is how they see things. They do not believe they can be redeemed after those mistakes and either lash out at others or lash out at themselves. The reality though, is that we all do things that will cast doubt on our “good”l image that we have spent so long constructing. For some being good has become a full time job and they have traded genuineness for fakeness. We become okay with persons who project what we expect and not who they truly are and expect others to be and act perfect when they were never meant to be that way. If we are good maybe it is okay to judge others, to relegate some to “those people”, who we will never be like.
If we accept that we a imperfect beings, then when we fall we can recovery quicker. We can accept that our failures do not define us but can transform us, help us grow and flourish, then we can better survive the storms of life. Guilt, will not take root and eat us alive – stifling our potential. Then we would know that there is life after those mistakes and that those mistakes will not have power over us. Instead of aiming for perfection, what we need to do is be honest on our journey, expect honesty and nothing more. Know that persons will disappoint you and be okay with this because they were never perfect to begin with and they should not have to be something they by nature are not.
Don’t strive to be perfect but to be an overcomer. It is better to have failed and learned from that failure than to remain stuck on impossibilities that cause you to fail. For it is in falling and failing many times that you will ascend to where you are truly meant to be:
for though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes. Proverbs 24:16
From the Edge of Doom.
From the edge of doom I stand.
Flames lick and caress my face
I can taste its essence
As my face drips with its lingering scent.
Just one more step
into a black void of nothingness
welcoming me home.
To step over
I must get by the jagged edge of my conscience
that rebels
reminding me of my commitments.
But how do I escape this pain
of loss?
I do not know
I cannot tell.
I look behind
nothing.
I look ahead
also nothing.
But maybe this nothingness ahead
will give me rest.
Take away the pain,
maybe?
"whether you go or stay it does not matter
it's all the same - "
I must shake it lose
this beast that tries to devour me
telling me to move forward
over the edge.
Maybe there is still hope
whatever that is.
Like Lot's wife I am rooted
but I have looked back -
again.
I cannot bend my knees
so I stand and pray -
relieve!
As the flames mesmerize and thrill
I consider embracing the madness.
Should I give in?
"Who must I kill to find redemption?"
No one comes,
no one answers.
So I stand -
until I am pulled over by the flames
or drawn away by saving grace.
If you died today what would your legacy be? I have thought about this and for me it is still up in the air. I guess it’s not up to me to answer that question; time will tell and so will my eulogy. I realise that sometimes the view we have ourselves differ greatly from the view others have of us. Some feel the need to write their own eulogy, just to be sure. I have been teaching for thirteen years and I often wonder if I have done enough with all the wonderful talents I have been blessed. Have I done enough? Been enough, seen enough, lived enpugh!? Can these questions ever be satisfactorily answered?
There was a time that I was so passionate about what I did and I did my best to do what I did. However, as time goes by and the expectations of critics are not met, they begin to chip away at the budding confidence you had in your ability. They look and note that you have not ascended to the lofty heights they thought you would reach and they tell you; so, you begin to question whether or not you really did anything, whether what you did was enough. It becomes especially hard when you see others who have done so many things that they have been recognised for and you begin to lose confidence in the little things you once thought were so great. May, you now feel, you are placed in a waiting room, because you disobeyed your call to action from God, then you begin to wonder if you are just drifting away.
But all I want to do is just live. I just want to live the kind of life I was intended to live, without fear worry or tears to cloud my vision. That is it, that is all. I don’t want the fame and I don’t want the fortune and don’t need the empty promises of who I could have been. In this moment without any more regrets and doubts about my place here at this time in history, I just want to live. This desire comes from a place that has never had time to heal properly from past wounds, it is too raw to touch, yet it yearns for sunlight. Above everything that this world could offer, all I desire is a chance to truly live a life free of expectations and perceptions, stereotypes and stereotypes. I want to inhale deeply and exhale freely and feel my heart swell with the joy of knowing that I have this gift that is worth more than silver and gold. We all need to just live and be allowed to live and any attempt to derail this is a crime against our humanity
There are so many landmines that people have to go through in this world, and many do not make it. There are unique problems that we each face that threaten our ability to live, some more than others. It is easy to become disenchanted by all the rocky mountains with loose rocks that come at our heads before we thinking about climbing those mountains. At the heart of everything is the one unchangeable truth, nothing is more precious than life. Nothing requires our full attention, but the desire to live.
Before we think of death, we have to deal with the business of how we will keep on living. We have to be aware of the value not only of our right to live but the right of all persons to live the life they have been given by God. It is a right that many are denied , a right that many do not know they have, right that should never be hijacked or denied. We should also keep in mind that we do not only fight to live, we also fight to realise the joy of truly be alive!
Since the start of 2020 many people view what’s happening at home and around the world and just want to take a permanent break from life.
Let’s hope no one stays at this point for the rest of the year.
So, at first I did not take the corona virus seriously. When you don’t know, you don’t know.
However, the rate of infection across the world is alarming and so requires everyone’s full attention. But, let’s be optimistic and pray for a speedy recovery from it. Though over 85000 global cases and a death toll of even one person, much less over 2,900 is a little, tiny bit alarming. This virus is a reminder, we may all feel we did not need, of how quickly the world as we know it can change.
With the real possibility of the outbreak becoming pandemic in 3, 2, 1… We are all grappling to make sense of our own lives much less the threat of a “novel” virus, breathing down our collective necks, relentlessly. I know here in Jamaica many jokingly agree that if it gets here we are all doomed, but if we don’t laugh what will we do? Why cry of course.
“Take a break but we should not retire”
However, we do not cry but crack jokes about climbing the Blue Mountains to escape it, but invariably someone has to point out that many would freeze so “it don’t make sense”. Ah boy, some people just won’t let others win! So while we try to outwit each other with witticisms about how to escape this thing; c’est la vie .
So we try every day to be as normal as possible – which by the way, normal can be very subjective. However, things happen daily that give us a proverbial lesson that planning is good, but not always foolproof. Does that mean we should just wait out the storms when they come?
While we may have the opportunity to take cover and wait out a difficult period, we should never stop going, especially when we have a deep conviction about what we are doing. We may take a break but we should not retire from taking the actions that will help us, to advance closer to where we want to be. While we may miss the target many times, we must still aim for the bull’s eye. While we may move forward with uncontrollable fear weakening our steps, we should never stop moving. We should never stop taking action. We should never stop laughing, even with the tears that seem unrelenting. We should never stop making things a little more bearable for everyone with our words and action We should never stop trying to give of our best, even if our best has to be redefined. Even when we stop, let us stop for a while, but keep going when the while has passed.
Life is a beautiful puzzle we all need to embrace, to pick a part and put back together, because we have no other choice, because we have been blessed with it. So while we face the challenges great and small, local and global, maybe we should not make it more complicated by causing traffic jams but just keep moving.
What does it mean to prove yourself? Also, who stands to benefit the most from your doing so?
Sure there are persons who don’t care what others think of them or what they do. However, there are more persons who do. Those of us who do spend too much time worrying of been labeled a “bad persons”. Too much time is spent trying to appease everyone whose opinions we think matter and none on discovering things about ourselves.
Many feel they have to be constantly proving their worth based on the expectations of others or even their humanity. It becomes a tragic tale of trying to keep up with the Joneses when the Jonese do not really care. When we cannot keep up, many persons decided that there are things inherently flawed about them, that they are broken and irredeemable. Having this mindset, has led many persons to fall into the rabbit hole of a depression that is nearly impossible to ever truly get out of. Therefore, it is important to be aware of when you begin this descent, to break the fall so that you do not go too deep.
It’s difficult to be like someone else, because we are not suppose to. It’s hard to be successful, because we are operating on someone else’s idea of success. It’s hard to define who we are, because we think we have to be defined. It’s hard to prove ourselves, because we have nothing to prove.
In high school I had the bestest friend ever, and I often saw her as the complete opposite of me. When I was still loud, immature and still a tomboy, she was quiet, mature and lady like. When I was thrilled by a good cuss-out and fighting she was not amused. However, I loved her; she was nothing like me, at times she was so nice she made me so sick, in the best way possible. But I appreciated her because she made me realize that it wasn’t always necessary to be loud and rough and a general wild child. I on the other hand, think I helped her to be a little less uptight. At the end of the day, I did not see our differences at that young age as a barrier, but as a way we complimented each other. I had nothing to prove to her and neither did she to me, we just got each other and loved each other for our differences.
However, I have noticed that it is as we get older that live really does a number on us. As we get older we are expected to be a certain way and be living a certain live that just is not realistic; we are not the same. We all cannot pursue the same dreams and care about the same things. Persons who are trying to have that universal dream , have to be honest enough to know that in trying to prove something they may end up being impostors. The need to wear a mask becomes one of the by-products of proving things to others. We become ten different versions of a self we cannot come to terms with and end up being far from our compass.
Anger becomes another by-product. Many who are angry at the world, reach that point because it seems no matter how hard they try, they always fall short. So they become angry at friends, family, the old lady down the road, the man walking pass them, the children making too much noise and the lucky few who boast about their accomplishments. Everything and everyone becomes a problem, until the only thing they have is their anger.
In a fair world we would know we don’t need to prove a thing to anyone. Our worth and value have always been there. Who we are has been known to us from birth. To question this, means that we either have or we are trying to prove to others that we are who they think we should be. What we all need to do is temper our expectations of what we can do; not trying to be all and have all, but confident in being your natural self.
There is no need to be ashamed of who you are. Stop trying to convince yourself that you are that label you have been pinned with and realize that you can never be anyone other than who you are.
It is also easy to do, so we are more tempted to do so than not. If we had to take the time to consider and admit that “everyone doesn’t do the same things, not “everyone thinks the same way” and not “everyone cares about the same things”, then we would have less of a concrete argument for some of the assumptions that we have.
It may seem that I am pointing the finger, and I am. However, it may comfort you to know that it is also pointed at me too, because we have all done this (or am I generalizing?). Sometimes we do it subconsciously and sometimes we are very deliberate about it. When we do not want to consider that there may be another side or some other reasonable explanation we sweep all doubts aside by generalizing. At this point, we are unwilling to listen and we don’t care much about the truth.
So, we go around, sometimes not knowing that we are the hosts to faulty and overgeneralization until we are forced to unmask it hiding within us. By that time, as is often the case, we have caused some direct or indirect damage to those who have to be content with these generalizations, because they have developed into prejudices and discrimination. And poor us for not knowing that using those sweeping generalizations would result in a language of hate and sentiments of division and “othering”.
Also, can you imagine thinking that because someone is from a specific place or does a specific job, you are better than they are? Only to find out, years later, that while you have been dangling on your last shoestring, they have been happily and successfully going about their business. That’s the irony of life when we get caught up in the lies that have become truths in society. Many miss out on the opportunities because of what they think of a place or of “certain” people!
I came across this quote and I think it is something that we all need to think about:
we cannot all become geniuses [and] we cannot all reach the same level.
The Joke’s on You:
I was talking to a friend who asked a student a while ago, how he would feel if he and the garbage collector got the same pay if he was able to get the material things we’re told to aim for, such as the best car, a grand house and so on. The student was adamant that he would not accept that because he and the garbage collector should not be getting the same pay because he is more academically gifted. But then my friend also made the point that some bright or even brilliant sparks who look down on persons with technical skills will never achieve as much as those persons. He further made the point that the act of looking down on persons for perceived shortcomings could be their way of addressing their own sense of inferiority.
Sometimes in generalizing, we feed the us-versus-them complex. With this complex people are vilified, and their very complex and real problems are distorted because we refuse to accept that everything is not black or white. No one is completely good or bad and often times the most interesting accept to a person, and the part we need to pay attention to the most are the grey areas. However, many dismiss the possibility of grey areas in favour of half the truth or no truth.
These ideas are supported all around us. in the exchanges that people have daily. We see it in the archetypal, good guy versus bad guy. Then we perpetuate these beliefs in our interactions with others. We look for certain signs and wonders and deem those to tell the story of who a person is until we are presented with a puzzle. But instead of interrogating our beliefs we deem it an anomaly and continue along in our faulty assumptions and generalizations.
But, we should also never forget that while we may not make generalizations about ourselves we buy into them. Based on how we look, what we have achieved and where we are from, we have accepted and lived out a certain image of who others may think we are. So, not only are we prone to generalizing others, but we also can become co-conspirators of our own generalization, without realizing the damage it has done to us.
I think that is why I love novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s speech, “The Dangers of a Single Story”, so much. It was listening to this speech that made me really question what I do not know about people and places. And while there is much that I still do not know or understand, at least I am more aware of this. Therefore, when I hear about such things as Ebola, I do not assume that all of Africa is affected and when I hear about Haiti, I do not only visualize temporary tent camps. Live is complex because people are complex and you can never fully represent everything that is life and every person in your telling, even in a story that involves them. There isn’t enough time to consider all the facets of a person or situation and you can never fully complete the story of someone’s life. Something will always be missing.
While it is hard to prevent ourselves from always generalizing people places or a situation, we should never accept that information as the truth. We should never be complacent in making authentic the injustice of reducing someone’s humanity to a single idea. A single fable.
India. Arie, in speaking about her song, Break the Shell, indicates a time when she was “fighting to grow”, a process she found to be “dehumanizing”.
Many of us have walls that we need to scale but we find it scary to make that first move. We find it difficult to make a plan to get over those walls, much less to tackle it. Instead, what happens is that we spend too much time dreaming instead of planning an escape. Before we know it, it has gotten impossible to make a move towards them.
But the people who live there are strong, and the cities have walls and are very large. We felt as small as grasshoppers, and that’s how we must have looked to them.
Numbers 13: 28, 33
We become like the men who Moses sent to spy in Canaan; we allow ourselves to become so small that we make the wall more powerful than it ever had a right to be. We also make ourselves too small and too insignificant in the eyes of those who guard those walls and keep us trapped within.We begin to see ourselves through the eyes of others and belief that their view of us is the only image that matters. We begin to wonder if we can grow tall enough and strong enough to conquer them and then we begin to lie to ourselves, rather than test our faith, by putting our trust in the will of the Creator for us.
That wall we build to keep everything out, the good and the bad. When we think it’s safer to keep in and keep everything out, even the things we are meant to keep. That wall we nurture, ignoring everyone that is on our team, only we did not know, because we built it to high to really see and know and grow. The wall we used to judge too harshly, can only be destroyed when we stop and accept people for who they are and not how we feel about them.
That wall can cause us to stop stretching to avoid the pain that comes with too much movement, and stop trying to escape the hurt that jumping and missing brings. So we forget that that wall was never that great in the first place, and never that strong to begin with, until we gave it the power to be so.
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