Most people are spending their New Year holiday sharing their resolution for some betterment or another. I mean, it is what tradition tells us we are supposed to do, right? So, what do I want to change? Change? No. Better? Yes. I can be better. I can be so much better. Who am I kidding? Lol! However, I am finally in a place in my life where I feel like I am better. Not to say that it isn’t worth my time investing in learning and bettering myself, but I am working through the process of this endeavor as I type. I am a better human being than I was ten years ago. I am aware of so many characteristics or “habits” I need to work to recalibrate into more productive habits. I look forward to it! I am a life-long learner, so I take no issue admitting when I am wrong or when I don’t know something. How else will I learn more?
Still, regardless of how wrong or confused or misguided I may appear, I am the humble student life strives so tenaciously to educate. From now on, I am embarking on the journey of no sorries! Like my husband always conveniently reminds me, I’m stuffing ALL of my sorries in a sock! I am DONE being sorry for anything out of my control. I realize I am the one who started the idiotic habit of apologizing for everything, but it’s derived from the fear of making someone disappointed, angry, or displeased. My entire childhood, I was petrified of making someone angry, because when I did, it resulted in frightening my spirit. It stunted my physiological growth, and although it has taken me a lifetime to understand this, I am armed with the knowledge that in order to improve as a human being, I have to be okay with not knowing. I have to love myself even if I disappoint someone. I have to be okay with not being the smartest one in the room, the best mom in the room, the best teacher in the room, the best wife in the room, or the best writer in the room. The pressure to be the “best of the best of the best, sir” is high, especially for women. I know society creates the wanton need to be typical, overtly successful, and obnoxiously arrogant about it, but I have never been the bombastic type. I’m haughty to think I am supposed to be the best of everything, but I can’t pretend it isn’t my goal to be better. Maybe it is acceptable to be the best at what I want in life, and not the best at what others think I should be the best at? This is where I redirect my learning. It’s perfectly okay for me to desire my own mastery, my own professional letter but I have to release the desire to adhere to public expectation. Those expectations are the ones that create neurotic moms and resentful wives, and we watched this play out during the 1950’s aka the golden years, but they weren’t as brilliant as we would like to remember. In some cases, the light was dimmed by our own self-loathing. The audacious appeal of reaching the proverbial height of perfection for an endeavor that sets us up for failure. There is no such thing as perfection. The human condition is not set up for it. We are beautifully fallible, but we can work to increase self-awareness.
I can be better at many things, but they’re things I want the best at, not what programming has convinced me is best for me to be the best at. It took me far too long to understand this place, and I will not allow anyone or anything to obstruct this view. I have a personal mission, one I had never considered I would take and never imagined I would want, but I do! I want to get to know who I was meant to be. I want to take some time, giving grace to the girl I never gave grace to in my past. I want to fight for her space, because she wasn’t given any, but it was me who starved her of this grace in adulthood, and no one else. I have neglected to give myself grace, credit, compliments, and all around self-love. I am now moting it be! I will love myself more than anyone else, because I am all I have. I am all I have in this life. You are all you have in this life! Do not let anyone cloud your view or manipulate your perspective. Wake up every day knowing you are the Captain of your voyage, no one else! Make every day, every decision, and every experience completely yours, because when it is all said and done, your future is your responsibility. Your journey is yours to map out, so get used to providing others with your directions. Own your journey, because you owe it to yourself just like it do.
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