Your perspective

It's funny how we can hear something over and over without grasping it and then one day it just clicks. Walking down the road to catch a tuk tuk to work this morning, I had one of those lovely moments.

I've heard the old adage, "However you see the world, that is how it is" meaning that your perspective or outlook on things dictates how things are. If you're negative, then the world is a bad place. If you're afraid, then the world is scary, etc.

I feel like I have intellectually understood this saying for a longtime but this morning I felt a new, deeper understanding arise within me. As a shy person, the world has always felt to have a certain amount of threat. Whether that was learned or innate, I have always approached things with an underlying reticence. Leary of being hurt or rejected, I imbue the world with a feel of threat.

Somehow this morning I saw just how wrong this perspective is. In general, people are loving and accepting, and if they are not, it has nothing to do with me. Just by seeing the world as a loving, accepting place provides that sense of security that we all seem to seek (in various and invariably wrong ways). I don't need any solid ground under my feet because knowing that things are as they should be and people are all just doing their best to be happy and safe provides me all the security and acceptance in this world that I need.

What a delightful notion. :)

Stories

All the many stories I tell myself throughout the day. Stories I write, read and write again. It's amazing how much of our lives can be frittered away in a fantasy land completely built of stories.

The moments when the stories fall away is truly the only moment where I find peace. It's this moment. The stories melt away and I'm left with the present. My feet on the ground, my eyes newly opened, an awareness that is so rare yet feels so right.

Then stories about this moment arises or a questioning of it's rightness, a doubt that steals away the moment and weaves a story in it's place. So it goes, the give and take of being human. The experience we all share and yet the same experience which makes so many of us feel so isolated. Finding that connection, feeling that truth that makes us feel safe and cozy, yet brave and bold. A comfort that supports us yet pushes us to grow and explore.

Resting in the knowledge that everything is as it should be, we are all just the same despite the differences, and we are all just doing the best we can with what is.