Some people have children so that
they can work towards creating a better life for them instead of realising that
they failed to create a better life for themselves. They relive their youth vicariously through their children.
Relaxing into a job that they have to keep going at because their child depends
on it, that is their main role in life now. To keep their child fed watered and
happy. It isn’t about their own hopes and ambitions anymore. That’s why people
break down and have a midlife crisis. By that point, their kids are grown and
don’t need them anymore to support them day-to-day. Its back to figuring out
what THEY want from life again. And most of them gave up on their dreams long
ago. Most of them can’t remember anything but a faint glimmer of what their
dreams were. Whether they still apply to what they want now is a completely
different question. That’s why we see people buying motorbikes or fancy cars or
some big object of desire- because all they’ve done is dust off the old dreams,
and tried to apply it to themselves now. They haven’t developed their dreams
since early adulthood, because that process was severed like the umbilical cord
of the baby they bore. And if their child was lucky, only that.
Live your
life fully, and only when you feel it is truly the right time for you to bear a
child, then do so. Do so because you have so much love and so much passion in
you that you could not possibly get it all out, even if you worked all day and
all night at what you love. Do it because you want to bring into the world an
amazing human being. Not because you are lonely, or need a diversion from the
truth that you may not have lived your life fully. Or that there are things you
were unable to reach due to circumstance. I’m not saying that not achieving
your dreams is your fault. Sometimes life really does get in the way. But not living in the moment, appreciating
the little things, not living for now, doing things that truly satisfy and feed
your soul, is a crime. Because you deserve better. You deserve to have the
sense of fulfillment, the joy, the passion and everything you could have hoped
for. Even if it is not in the form that you had originally wished for. Live life and feel everything that you are
made to feel… whether it be abject sorrow, or deep joy. Lets face it, life
comes with both of these in varying quantities. There is an abundance of
feeling, both good and bad, and they all have their purpose. Sorrow so that you
can heal, joy so that you can love and love so that you can experience joy. All
feelings are integral to being human. They make us feel alive, even though
sometimes that is the last thing we want to be.
Don’t hope
that your child will do all of that for you. Because if you don’t embody it,
chances are, they will follow the same route as you in the end. Hoping that their child will live fuller than they ever dared. Know how to
live life, and teach others. Enrich lives with your being, and your doing and
your knowing that we are all here to create, in our own unique ways. We see so
many people who hope that their children will do well, and are oh so proud when
they do fantastically (and who wouldn’t? We must all hope for that.) But it is
different when we put so much pressure on them to achieve, because we have not
achieved ourselves. Happiness is not even dependent on achievement. You
will not reach happiness if you keep on chasing it from one achievement to the
next. You will only push it further away and work yourself into the ground
trying to catch the sun on that horizon line. Happiness comes from taking joy
in what you do, those everyday moments. For me, it is being in nature and marveling at all the wonderful unique creations, all the organically
configured branches on a tree, and the decaying leaves in autumn. Nature
teaches us that both beauty in the things that are full of vitality, and beauty
in the dead and dying, are all present. Everything about nature has its own
beauty. I love it because nature is no perfectionist, it celebrates each and
every unique individual in its own way- the big, the small, the strong, the
weak, the full of joy and the ones just making it through the days. You are not
separate from nature, you are an intrinsic part of it.
If we could learn to untie the
irrational knots between happiness and achievement, weight and health, and a
myriad of other ‘laws’ that we have in place in our society’s perception,
then we would be all the better for it.
We would see acceptance of all body types, of all learning types, of all
types of intelligence and ways of doing things that no one dare dream of
because ‘it was a stupid idea.’ We would know that our assumptions are hardly ever true, and know that we could not pigeon hole someone because we have no idea of their journey, and where they are along their path. Almost no one fits into society’s wants of us.
Because all the molds were built too narrow to hold us, too confining to allow
us the freedom and creativity of our expression. Because we didn’t fit these molds at a young
age, we were told we were stupid, or lazy, or never accomplished anything, or
were to big or too tall or too white or too black to ever be found attractive
by anyone else. We liked the wrong things, the wrong people, the wrong
everything and society punished us for it, made us all outcasts in one way or
another.
The people that did and still do try to conform to these norms are
punished with the restraint of their own soul. They were domesticated and beaten
into shape- for the most part, willingly. They wanted acceptance, and received
a taste, but not really. Not for who they really are, not for who they wanted
to be, the things they wanted to do, but for how they fit the mold. And if they
didn’t fit it in all ways, they were still rejected. To domesticate yourself
and to make yourself follow these rules that society put in place to take away
our human power, is to give up the chance for long lasting and real acceptance
of you as yourself. You can only be young and beautiful and successful for a
very small window of your lifetime- at least by society’s standards.
Why not
give up that ideal, work on being truly yourself, truly loved and accepted by
others, even if only a few. That is a long lasting acceptance and love. It will not fade when you get wrinkles. It
will not disappear if you lose your job, it will not atrophy if your beauty
turns into a different kind of beauty not commonly accepted. Wrinkles and warts
and failings and all, and to still be accepted. That is true love. From
friends, lovers, maybe even strangers. Foster kindness in your heart, and
appreciate beauty in all forms, the beauty of the dead, the dying, the ‘ugly’
and the unacceptable truths. For there are lessons in all of them, beauty in all
of them. To be narrow in all of your definitions is to trap yourself within
them. You will never accept yourself with all your human imperfections if you allow this.
Have a
big enough heart to accept yourself now, to accept that you are doing the best
that you can possibly do, and that it is ok to not be the best, the brightest,
the prettiest, the most successful.
You are enough.
I would not wish to see a
forest of trees as straight as a ruler, no blemishes, no branch or leaf
differing from the next tree. It would be saddening to see. Variety is what we
are all here to express, and to live and love. Love all of the imperfections in
life and you will find happiness. You will find that everything is always new.
