Being me
I think my biggest enemy has always been myself. I have held my accomplishments up to the stellar achievements of others and felt that the quality of what I do has fallen short. I think that is very sad for me because I have soured my quality of life. I mean to change that attitude. Life is not a football game. There is no winner. Life is a golf game where your competition is your previous score, not that of the guy next to you. Indeed I look back over my very long life and I cannot say I have written the greatest novel, painted the finest picture, done the best comedy, taught the most exciting class but I can say that the writing I do now is far more textured and profound than the writing I did when I started on this road 62 years ago. I look at my paintings and I know that the artistic excitement of what I am producing now has far more depth than it did with those first tentative oils I painted in Bloomington,Indiana forty years ago.
As for teaching....ah that has always been my hidden gift. I think in reality the teaching I do now is more freeing my students to be themselves instead of telling them a fact they must learn.
That is a good thing.
Self image: that has always been my downfall. To me I am homely, inadequate, blundering and failing at everything I try. I look back now and I realize that those blunders where tiny steps that took me closer to my rainbow. Those failures were detours that we all must experience if we are to choose the best road for us to travel. And what is beautiful but the way you make others feel about themselves? Homely is only a statement the mirror makes.
I do not want to sound like a Pollyanna but I do believe that we need to love our efforts instead of our results or we will waste our dreams on negative evaluations of what we did NOT do instead of what we learned. We need to take what life gives us and run with it. What a waste to long for what you do not have or did not get. You need to go get it instead of pining away for it. And you need to be sure you really want that elusive utopia you can't quite cup in your hands.
More thinking as I start the new year....more wondering...more seeking.
posted by Lynn Ruth MIller @ 6:45 PM
2 Comments:
The real shock is when you realise even the most accopmlished people--particulary the ones who seems to hog acclaim to themselves-- feel the same. :)
I feel like my comparison of self to others doesn't just make me miserable and jeaolus, it freezes me and prevents me from trying anything. (my dad used to say,"If you can't do it right, don't do it at all!" Big help, dad)
Anyhow, screw competitiveness. Let the other people be "the best", if I impress myself and one or two key people, I'm happy. And if I can do that *and* appreciate other people's accomplishments,so much the better.
I feel that you still have not realized that you are on a road - one that has twists and turns but always forward. but forward does not mean future - past, present, future - they are all here in the prsent - but that too is elusive foever slipping into the past even as we try to "be in the moment" so in the end- but not the end of the road we are always in the past. Keep on your road - tht inside road, tht mental road that keeps you beautiful and seeking and creative. We must talk more about this - "being on the road"' is a major concern and interest of mine. ktm
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