again? The New Year is here today with all it's seeds of hope and wishes for change...the desire to get on track...to live life with more gusto and break out of the humdrum routine I have become comfortable with. It has been the same story for the past 63 years of my book. Often I make lists of resolutions...because I am far from perfect and there is always room for improvement. These resolutions usually take the form of diet and exercise routines, cleansing rituals and promises to be more diligent about my creative endeavors. A more rigorous schedule, a deeper commitment, a more personal sacred pact with my inner divine self...are all manifestations of my New Years urge for new beginnings. Wouldn't it be wonderful if this year, finally, I can love myself enough to make these resolutions become truth. And every year I fall for the same trap. Many promises become a list of reasons to hate myself. Look at you...always promising big things and never delivering. The criticism of myself is merciless and the more resolutions I make, the more harassment I can give myself for not performing. Something inside me knows I am capable
of great things. Unfortunately, the self talk I have internalized is more likely to remind me that I am nothing much, an under achiever, a purpose with no focus...the list grows the longer I ponder. I have sifted through the formative experiences of my life and come up empty of answers. My tendency is to seek places in my life where I can place blame. And that works for awhile but eventually I keep coming around to realize that yes, I have received endless negative messages from family, friends, and teachers...brainwashing from TV and magazines...subliminal messages of worthlessness and despair at being just an ordinary woman who gives precedence to everyone else's agenda. In my struggle to find goodness within myself, I have quashed the whisperings of my dark side...and become a good little girl that is nice and supportive to her family and friends, yet mean and cruel to her inner child.
I am aware that I am one among many. I have bought into a public idea of beauty, body size, coolness. I have internalized things my mother taught me even when she wasn't teaching. I have become that under achiever I was accused of being in high school. I now reject myself and my ideas before anyone else can tell me otherwise. The layers of thought habits grow deeper as the years pass. I seem to hang suspended ...unable to move forward...caught in a web of my own weaving.
Who am I??? The defeated idealist? The chaotic collage of messages I've received?? Or something far more wonderful and mysterious? Do I have to bend over backwards and posture myself in strange animal poses in order to shape myself into a person I can be proud of? Somehow New Years asks me to reach for something greater within myself. Does that require complex formulas of movement, healthy foods and abstinence from many of the things I love? Must I write every single day to consider myself a writer? Do my paintings have to be perfectly realistic to be considered art? Do I even care what other people think anymore? Maybe that is the grace of older age...that finally, after spending a lifetime attempting to be someone I am not, for the sake of approval from people out there, all involved in their own personal struggles...I have grown to realize the trap I've bought into. The more I try to please others, the more damage I do to my self.
Yesterday, I watched a pileated woodpecker fly over the trees in the back yard while letting out a laughing sound as he bounced his way along in his unique flight. Rhythm...laughter...a strange prehistoric body with a garishly bright red head..all part of my pondering of the New Year. I doubt very much he gave a thought to how his flight compared to that of a raven...or beat himself up for having a harsh laughing voice instead of the melodious song of the Rose breasted grosbeak. In order for this year to be really different, I need to think, dream. be something really different. Action!! Promises and talk are not working for me. This year...I am trying this. I see myself and the New Year as a new born baby bird, nest bound and featherless. What makes me uniquely myself is written in my genes...and etched on my soul. I don't have to do anything to become my mysterious self. All that is needed is a willingness to radically accept myself , unencumbered by external formulas for a good life and the perceived expectations of others . Relaxing into myself...a peace envelopes me. A bird does nothing to grow feathers and all that it takes to fly, is a willingness to risk awkwardness to learn the purpose of the wings. Nature heals. And there is nothing and no one out there who can help me be myself. So this year...I resolve to love the unfolding of my life and create an openness to the shadow, the mystery and surprise of getting to know my self. Really...it's pretty simple when you resolve to simply be. Funny how that isn't really so simple. I relax into myself without prescriptions or agendas or thinking I know the way. I am the baby bird and the New Year and a new beginning... by throwing off all those chains made of preconceived ideas and what works for everyone else. ..written paths that others have walked. This is my life. And that is new.
No comments:
Post a Comment