I think maybe I have arrived...!
Before leaving our homes each morning we wake up, cleanse ourselves and get dressed up as if trying to wash away our imperfections and cover up our flaws. Hiding portions of ourselves from the ourselves and the world. For a small time we maybe able to fake ourselves out by fooling the world, and sometimes we may even fool ourselves convincingly of our own flaws and imperfections.
We leave our homes and go into the world and accumulate friends and acquire relationships still hiding ourselves each day.
We tend to overly express positively those things that that delight us about another person and brush off those things we aren’t too crazy about. We find ourselves mildly attracted to a person so we become willing to forgive those little imperfections about another. Then we find ourselves wildly attracted and when we should maybe support others the most we start to feel more comfortable suggesting ways to the other person on how THEY can improve. We can go on for years in this pattern. Is it fair for us to try and fix someone to our specifications while we marinate in our imperfections?
We allow ourselves to grow closer to others and convince ourselves we’re being real with who we are while presenting a “game face.” When our own imperfections begin to show up we resist and begin to hide, not trusting those around us to accept us 100%
Until…..
Until that moment of truth arrives. In each relationship and friendship a moment of truth arrives. That moment of truth? The real you. We each encounter experiences that make us who we are and cause us to define our actions and attitudes. These experiences draw us to conclusion and assumptions no matter how correct or incorrect they may be. To us, in certain situations, right or wrong, those conclusions are real.
Sometimes the defining moment of a friendship/relationship comes, not when you are at our best, but when you are at our worst. When you are broken down, unsheathed from the walls you build up and hide your imperfections behind and allow ourselves to be seen, unedited in the raw essence of any kind of fear or anger and brought to a point where there is nothing but our skin and true emotion and can allow ourselves to be seen or experienced in our deepest since of vulnerability…..you have just shown the world who you really are. YOU HAVE JUST ARRIVED. This state of vulnerability IS our greatest fear. When we find people who can accept us in our pure realness, the good, the bad and the ugly, You can honestly say… you have found someone worth having in your life. I can’t remember where I heard it, but someone said “love is experiencing someone at their absolute worst and STILL being able to see the best in them.” If this is the case…. I have indeed arrived.
This week has been the absolute worst and greatest week of my life. I have been good, I have been bad, I have even been worse and I have been ugly. Sometimes are greatest experiences are not the most fun or the easiest. Those great things we experience and accomplish sometimes come by looking our deepest fears face to face, and having it out with them anyway. No one else has to understand it or accept it as real or even a challenge, because to them it may not be. But YOU define who you are, they don’t. Some will come to know the real you and some may never know the real you. The important thing is that YOU know the real you and become brave enough to present yourself to the world. And as long as you are happy with who your are, what you’ve accomplished and who YOU ALLOW to be close to your heart that is where true happiness comes in.
Hi, “My name is KayDee, we’ve known each other for quite sometime, but I think we've actually finally just met...”
Have you arrived?
" Greatness is Measured By What Has Been Overcome."