Human beings are hard-wired for connection. We want and need to be a part of the life that surrounds us. What gets in the way of that connection is a lack of belonging to ourselves. To connect with others, we first have to connect with ourselves.
Belonging to yourself requires an ownership of all that you are, and all that you have been. Owning your story means that you get to write your own ending. Where we can often get stuck is trying to pick and choose which parts of ourselves we want to display and acknowledge. “I’m not this person anymore, so I don’t want to show that I ever was this person”. Denying the hard parts of ourselves and the things that we’ve overcome takes away our ability to be “real” in the world. Pretending the bad parts don’t exists makes the good parts feel like pretend too.
None of us woke up as the people that we are, everyone has a story and a struggle and a life that they’re working their way through.
Practicing being a whole-hearted person, someone who can live and love with their whole selves, means overcoming the idea of having to play pretend with your life. It doesn’t mean that we have to wear our stories on our sleeves and share every part of ourselves with strangers. Rather the idea is to let go of the fear of being “other”. Someone outside this perceived group. We are all human. We are all people who live and love and succeed and fail. We all fall down, and we all try to get back up. Each of our journeys is uniquely our own. No one knows your full self and your full story other than you.
Life is full of unknowns and uncertainties, and amid this chaos and worry we want to cling to things we think we can control. We want to categorize and simplify, make things more palatable, quicker, and easier.
But what if we all slowed down?
What if we all slowed down to the pace of life?
What if we all slowed down to the pace of life and let the universe reveal itself to us?
No more rushing through with our heads down and our hearts closed.
What if we all took a chance on life and found a way to be calm amongst the chaos?
Not quick, not easy, but the right kind of hard.
We are all within our own reach, right here within ourselves is the greatest love and acceptance of the universe itself. We just have to find our way back to ourselves, that is this great journey that we call life.
Let’s Practice.