< Nod and insert your quick agreement here>.
The cartoon rendering below my picture was sent to me by a friend, that is not real. I know it isn't real, but I am interested in the artist.
This year has been marked by experiences that I will just call "unreal". I find myself ending relationships of all sorts, starting new ones, and reinvesting in others. It's a bit of a good and bad and I take it all in as the flow that life offers up.
I sense something is not real, see it is not real, but I in my compassion develop an interest in how it is made up, I find myself hoping I can help to authenticate it and have even told myself that the mutual artist (God) put the person or experience in my path so that I can help to make it real. The truth is that the only thing I can authenticate is my own life experience and the only person that I have to keep real is myself. For each of us that can do that, life becomes a better experience.
There is a theme of people misrepresenting and also of them pretending. They send their representatives or a caricature that they cannot keep up with and neither can I. They lie about the value of things they ask you to connect to and grossly feign status and values. The education that comes from these experiences is immense.
The sorrow is not as great, but there is that too. Sorrow that somewhere in life these people had so much rejection and discomfort with their reality that they seem to believe that acceptance comes from pretending. I have sorrow that there is a belief that who they are needs to be covered up and that they need to wear the masks that they do every day. These masks..they must be heavy.
I think that all of us cope differently and now I know that the pretending that is "unreal" to me or someone else is normal to another person. It is essentially the only way they know. This is how they get by..they present everything that is not real and it becomes okay for them because they are surrounded by people who accept and/or encourage them to stay fake. These people have deep seated problems; sometimes of an emotional; psychological nature. They tend to cope by lying, cheating, pretending, and acting until they come into contact with my way of being which is " I want nothing from you ...so tell the truth! " ...and then they start to fess up. Some of the reveal is of their own initiative and that is indeed best. Forgiveness comes easier that way.
When the truth does not come of one's own initiative there is all kinds of confrontation that can ensue before forgiveness comes. It is indeed frustrating but I choose peace and I am grateful in the very moment that the truth comes to me because I then can make decisions based on that moment and find my way out of their low energy zone. This is not just true of me. It is true of all of us.
I tell myself that we are all spiritual beings having a human experience. Some of us are further along the path than others and I hold no grudges against anyone. I think that someone wearing a mask and unable to present the truth of who they are and what their life and/or enterprise involves is a person with enough trouble, pressure, low self esteem and insecurity and I have no desire to add to that tortured existence. I cannot pretend that there is no impact from these negative actions on others' well-being.
When the actions are primarily based on falsehoods inevitably it all ends up hurting other people. I do wish that everyone could present themselves with the faith of a newborn. As naked as a newborn comes into the world...I doubt they are born with worry and anxiety or a goal to deceive. They have an instinctual trust that their arrival will be announced, people will want to know them and they will be held and fed. Those who wear masks are numb to that. Be it that they are reminded is my only wish.
Now the decision that comes to me is to simply not judge, to pay attention,to be aware, and to manage my time with the person/enterprise accordingly. Where judgment enters my thought pattern, I have decided that I am wrong for the experience. I am good at walking away and I believe that resolution comes from within. Whatever I think needs to change to be better or different begins with me. The changes I imagine are needed will occur within me. The experiences that shake me and create cracks in my enthusiasm are for creating a wider door for good, abundant, and glorious things and people to come in.
With the misrepresentations and Halloween masks that I have come into contact with this year I have learned these things:
- I need to ask questions that are more specific than what is normal and imagine this....question the face value.
- When people are deceptive with their bosses,business partners, significant others, family members....they are in a state of desperation and misery of a most horrible type.
- I need to ask a whole list of things and scrutinize; exercise a greater level of discernment in order to know what is real..I have to manage to the criteria for what is real to me in the initial conversations. I have to make it heavy up front.
This can make for a rigid and less spontaneous ride, but you see, I am not " nearly 20."
I am what would be best termed as "full grown." I have had a life of travel, career, love, tests, challenges and discoveries and I have no time for caricatures. In all of this discovery, I have treated people well and presented the truth. I am honest and kind. It is the only way I know how to be. This is my real.
It has not been easy, but in this October month where Halloween is on the horizon, I think I am asking more people who want to associate with me to come naked. Leave the masks and costumes. Show me and tell the truth..I want to know what is real. Don't you?
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