When we tell ourselves we are not
good enough we are instantly right. We have bought into what we perceive others
are saying, with their words or actions. Our perceptions of their renderings of
us put us back on our heels. The emotions we feel push us down. Our self-judgments
knock us out, cold.
What we consistently tell ourselves
ends up being all that matters in this life. Action is routinely tied to
perpetual thought. As Rust Cohle of True Detective concludes with point blank
certainty, in terms of the human race: “Look, as sentient meat, however
illusory our identities are, we craft those identities by making value
judgments. Everybody judges all the time. Now, you got a problem with that,
you’re living wrong.” I am with myself every single day, 24/7. So are you. I am
solely at the mercy of myself. As are you. As we sidle and straddle, filter
through and flock to, different energies, good and bad, the tendency is to
self-judge. There is the energy of the environment in the absence of humanity.
There is also the environment we humans co-create and inhabit, arguably
dominate. Nowadays, this environment is nearly everywhere. Nowhere is humanity
unheard. Though, there are some that may argue, this isn’t humanity. Either
way, we are all affected by it. Every type of people is a person. Even the
grotesquely inhumane are in some truthful way representative of all latent
humanity. This is perhaps the best evidence of a greater dimension; otherwise
we would all fall prey to absolute evil. Nonetheless, we are good and we are
bad. It is who we choose to listen to that determines how we choose to act. The
one dimensional existence is full of lots of neat, fancy thoughts and notions,
standing atop tall buildings looking down on anyone that is not them. The voices
of these people are primarily full of shit. We all have been on top of these
tall buildings before. We have all been below the ground, unfit for breathing
the same air as our fellow humans. We have all been full of shit. Even when we
all walk side by side, our sense of self is rarely on par with what others
think of us. In short, we are thinking way too much about what others think of
us. What will they say? What will they think and not say? What would I say or
think if the roles were reversed? This last question is telling. Asking is in
short, an admission of guilt.
We all judge. I won’t deny that I
do. I will state matter-of-factly, if and when I judge, it is rarely malicious.
None of our thoughts are ever absolute. There is always redemption. I observe
and notice and sometimes infer. An inference about a person is a judgment. We
take sensory information and perceive that something about that person, based
on what we have seen through firsthand experiences and interactions with that
person is true. It is how the human mind functions. When we gather new
information, we formulate new thoughts. A judgment is not a conclusion.
Conclusions are final and high-stakes, condemning and damning. Most judgments
we make are forgotten by the end of the day. Yet there is a tendency to hold
onto self-judgments, as if they were written in stone. I am lazy. Tell
ourselves enough and we will sink into the sofa every single day and sleepwalk
through tomorrow. I am not smart enough. Tell ourselves enough and we will
settle for something less than what we truly want. I have bad genetics, I will
always be overweight. Tell ourselves enough and we will enlarge and atrophy, at
the same time. Sigh. I can’t show my true self because no one wants to see me
for who I really am. This is never the case! The world would be such a much
better place if we were all less afraid to be ourselves. We all need to just go
for it, hand in hand.
I can forgive someone one thousand
times over if they have good intentions and a good heart. However, I have
trouble forgiving myself. I have trouble accepting failure as something less
than final judgment. I have concluded, the following: We aren’t really living
if we aren’t failing, in the conventional sense. Life is paradoxical: it is
static movement. There are so many factors, nuances, and change in a fraction
of time that our unique, individual experience is ultimately impossible to
track. The graphing model is “anything goes,” within a range of personal
response that has much to do with individual personality traits and tendencies
established in our earliest years. Though we may very well hold onto the same
mannerisms and quirky behavior long ago structured, that makeup a part of who
we are, we can do something to redirect the energy encircling our insecurities,
stifling the negative thought patterns that are merely illusionary intertwinement.
Dead in their tracks, these negative thought cycles no longer exist. Our
insecurities are now just insecurities. In the absence of fear, these
insecurities no longer hold any real power over us. They no longer reverberate
throughout the spaces of our mind. They no longer control our actions. We are
free. To live fully.
We become graffiti, or caution tape,
a faint outline of our true being when we habitually ignore that whisper from a
higher plane that tell us: Get up. You
are good enough. Failure is necessary. Judgments are mortal. Fears are formed out of a singular primary
fear that we are somehow imperfect. And yet, we fail to see that imperfect is
an imperfect word, as are all words, and therefore each and every label we
ascribe to ourselves or place on others. After all, they are all human
constructs. We are all perfect, our true selves are all perfectly spherical.
This is our destiny, and to question is normal. We need to be careful though,
not to ascertain; for it is in vain. There is a higher plane a piece of each of
us is a part of. But where do we come from?
