Put another way, I believe & always have that we are all meant to be - at every point in our life - a fully expressed human being. Of course, such a reality would come attended by the not-easy-to-experience consequence that people wouldn't present the false faces & fake pretenses that make life easier to move through.
We'd have to be ourselves & experience others as their genuine, fully expressed selves. That would be challenging & exasperating & sometimes gosh awful, but isn't that what life's meant to be?
Not that it's been my experience. Certainly not within my birth family, where the polar opposite is more the norm.
My family has quite a few members who zone out anything contrary to their personal, preferred view. They come by that naturally, from Mom, who would leave a room rather than hear anything contrary to her preferred beliefs or simply rewrote uncomfortable realities to suit her version of what should be. There are a lot of people, especially women of her generation, just like her.
Many years ago, a young relative shared her belief we're supposed to remain pleasant & personable with family, working through any issues with friends, who don't present potential emotional land mines. Present a false self to ones we hold dear, be your true self only with people you can count on not trampling your feelings. Gosh, I hope she grew past that (to me) limiting belief!
Nothing tops the brother who remembers heading off to college at the earliest possible moment, shaking off the dust of home, ever to be independent of his toxic family, never to live again under the same roof. It was strangely illuminating, even liberating, realizing how utterly & completely we live alternate realities.
Last night, three loose threads - something I read, something I'd said, something I'd written - joined together to produce a blazing AH HA! moment.
- In the afternoon, at a Current Events discussion at a grannie client's senior residence, someone warned the group to tred softly criticizing the president, because I would not like it - seizing the educable moment, I explained how criticism of any of my convictions are welcome WHEN they are backed up with specifics, not just a general unsupported slam.
- In the early evening, I blogged a personal declaration of independence - I hold these truths to be self evident - that all older others are born with the divine right to live as independent a life as they possibly can manage.
- In the late evening, reading in bed before John came up, came across the statement that we are each called to be a fully expressed human being. Almost leaped out of bed with joy & clarity!
YES! We are each called to be fully expressed human beings at each & every point in our life. The great AH HA! was realizing that belief has been part of the warp & woof of my life since... well, forever.
Rewind back to my early teens... Praise be, for a link to A Thousand Clowns, a film my sister introduced me to in my early teens!!
The scene I most cherish is between Jason Rhobards' non-conformist writer & Martin Balsam, his successful brother. Murray Burns paints his businessman brother as a sell out. His pragmatic sibling, in a wonderful speech, stands tall as he sets Murray straight - he may twist & turn within "the rules," but every day, in everything he does, he's proud to be the BEST possible Arnold Burns (starts at 7:38).
That speech hit home with me at 14 or 15 years old, stays with me still, as does a line from Murray - "You gotta own your own days and name 'em, each one of 'em, every one of 'em, or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you. And that ain't just for weekends, kiddo."
Two things I'm going to celebrate by heading down to Be Well Bakery & Cafe for a cafe au lait & a yogurt parfait - we are ALL meant to be the best version of our most fully expressed self, every moment of every day however challenging that might make life ~and~ Murray was right in this - we gotta own our own days or else the years go by & none of them belong to us.
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