Welcome. Thank you for finding your way here. Maybe this will never be more than a place for my thoughts, documentation of my journey to deeper self-awareness. But, if you are reading this, I hope that is because you, too, understand the necessity and urgency of self-discovery and the consequences of choosing not to invest in the work that must be done to shape yourself into someone whole. My goal with this space is to establish a safe place to tackle this process, especially because it is such a daunting one, and one we tend not to spend enough time on during our short stays on this planet. Thank you, again, for joining me. I believe we can all benefit from going about the process of working through ourselves. The hardest position to be in is the beginning, and look, we're already here.
The following passage is from my daily journal. I often write more of my experiences and reactions, but today's was more reflective than usual and, I thought, a good place to start.
I want to speak for a moment about the idea of 'coming back to oneself'. The phrase is right to understand self-development as beginning with 'returning' to the self. We spend too much of our lives trying to mask and deviate ourselves from 'the self', blaming our choices and decisions on mysterious, exterior forces, and shrouding ourselves from the true culprit: us.
At the end of the day, humans are painfully individual and excruciatingly alone. We flit back and forth with relationships - of all sorts - because for some 'inexplicable' reason, we delude ourselves into thinking the gaps in our beings are meant to be filled with the presence of another. It is remarkable that we spend so much time and money and energy trying to attract and retain counterparts, that embarking on this impossible task of finding someone 'to complete you' seems preferable to unpacking the layers of our own psyche. By some paradoxical confusion, we choose not to work with what is most accessible to us, but instead we fight and struggle and cry and bury ourselves in anguish and doubt and deprecation wondering over and over and over again if we will ever manage to find 'the One.' Well, the one has always been there.
It's you.
Of course, emotional work is easier, much, much easier for some than others. But it is always possible. I don't believe anyone who says that they are incapable of attempting this work. I believe it will be difficult. It will be unpleasant. But it is absolutely essential, for the truth is, as much as we may deflect from it, the only guarantee in life is that we are completely and utterly ourselves.
We have our own thoughts, our own emotions, our own passions, our own choices, and our own dreams. Doesn't it then seem like the right idea to honor that, nurture that? Doesn't it seem peculiar how ready we are to take on the emotional weight of another individual, with entirely individual thoughts, emotions, passions, choices, and dreams, before we want to understand and know our own? We are cheating ourselves out of, well, ourselves. We are betraying our power of freedom to being.
Isn't that silly to think about? How we insist on excusing behavior and blaming others for how they treat us, when we refuse to unearth the parts of ourselves that put us in those positions where desire of fulfillment from another was greater than our desire to really, and I mean really know ourselves?
If our life is structured by choice - beyond a material sense, I'm referring to emotional and mental wellbeing - and the only thing we own and the only thing we know is us, doesn't it make sense to try and work a bit harder to be comfortable exploring it? To examine our values and make sure these life-determining choices are aligned with them, informed by us and us alone?
No 'success' matters other than this success. It is artifice to believe external accolades complete us. We have the power within ourselves to achieve completion. All we need to do is conjure strength, grit our teeth, and summon it.
~ colette
