To truly love and accept ourselves seems a difficult task for many. I recently spent some time asking people in one of my very “scientific” surveys, if they loved themselves. I thought it a fairly simple query with “yes” or “no” being the answer. The responses surprised me. There were very few “yes” answers and an interesting conundrum of responses that took my question down many a rabbit hole of philosophy.
I think we live in a very difficult time for identification with personhood and individuality. We are so outward oriented and seem to judge ourselves by some socially dictated criteria of what is “good” and “bad.” There seems to be a set of absolutes that we “must be,” but these absolutes are anything but! They are nebulous and clouded by cultural models and “Dudley Do Right” imperatives of perfection.
The essence of our humanity is our imperfection! Therein lays the beauty and the wonder of us as creatures walking the planet. If we were perfect creatures, there would be no “oomph” or punch, no place to go and nothing to do. It is our ability to change and become more as individuals that makes us so very beautiful.
I have come to love and cherish myself-the good, the bad and the ugly-over the last number of years. It has been an amazing journey of heart and soul, an inside adventure of carefully and quietly taking stock of the lady that I am. At the outset I was terrified. What would I find once I had cinched my belt and squared my spiritual shoulders to delve into this inside Robin? I put on a miner’s light of courage and started the walk into the shadows that had scared me for years.
And what did I find as I walked these inside avenues of me? I found a human being, beautiful and amazing in her strengths and in her imperfections. I found a lot more courage than I knew I had. I also found talents and gifts that I had ignored. But, too, there were cobwebbed tables of laziness and behavioral excuses that needed cleaning out.
I discovered that this place I so feared was actually a “character-of-Robin” buffet that I could rather enjoy and explore. Once I accepted that this table of stuff was the stuff of me, I could then rearrange, display and discard things. I could pick up a sadly wilted salad of self-pity and say, “Gee, I think it is time I toss this little darling!” I also found food for thought on this table. “Hmmm . . . maybe this hard, stale bread roll of rigid thinking would do better as a happy red Jell-O mold that had some give and take to it?”
I invite you to visit yourself. Take a walk to your buffet table-that inside place where the you of you is waiting. Explore it and love it. Because you are amazing and remarkable!
Robin Korth
www.insightsonaging.com