Like a flower
"You are like a flower. In that you bloom in the light and hide in the dark. In all though, still a flower and a beauty to be seen, a beauty to be cherished. For what you are at your peak, or what you are at your weakest is the most enjoyable of all natural creation. Whether you are in the sun or in the dark You are in a field of peddles enjoying the radiance of the day and the power of this life."
Accepting that we are not perfect
So many people in this life will go around with the idea that others are better then them. They see the professional athlete and think he or she is better because they have more money, or they have a larger home. They see the movie star and think that they are better because their looks are so exact and so wonderful, yet they look into a mirror and because it is not the same image they feel less balanced to this life. In our Witness days we saw the elders, the pioneers and many others as having things or doing things that put them above us in our minds.
Take a look around you some day, and see who the people are around you. Are these people the rich famous people, are they the beautiful movie stars? Walk down to the busiest street in town and look around, how many of these people are the people you want to be? Are all those woman perfect blondes with thin trimmed bodies, are all those men wearing their hair perfect with a Hercules physique? Soon you will learn that much like yourself these people are the ones to whom you look like. You look like everyone else, you are as normal as the rest of the word.
I remember once, and I will not share the name, I was in a location with several people. We were talking and looking around when suddenly a lady walked into the room and started shopping. The woman looked familiar, but something seemed out of place. We all continued to talk, when suddenly we heard the woman speak and we realized she was a well known movie star. Apparently, to go unnoticed she had put on less make-up then normal and was wearing a less them glamorous outfit. We all looked over and to be honest we were shocked. Here was this famous woman that people always want to look like, and she looked as normal as any other shopper in the store. Not that she was ugly or anything negative like that, but it was a eye opening example of how "Hollywood" portrays a unrealistic image of what people really are.
Men as much as woman have issues with image, we will work out for months and months to get the perfect trimmed body. We will diet and drink some of the most disgusting drinks you could image to build muscle. Yet, if asked we would say that image means nothing and we are doing this for health reasons. The reason is, we do not want people to realize what is going on in our heads. We have those thoughts of, "If I just trim down 5 more pounds I will look like I did in high school" or "When I get all buff, no one will ever guess I was the class nerd."
We all think this way, we all add to our self doubt with each word we say and with each thought that says, "No one else is thinking this but me." Could you imagine a world in which we all set down one day and said only what we were thinking? It might be humorous in some thoughts, but for the most part we would soon realize that our doubts, are the shared doubts of others. We all think and accept that others have it better without even knowing the name of the other person, let alone their inner thoughts and habits.
Now I realize that many people will say, and with good reason, that much of what they are thinking comes from childhood up bring. Perhaps they had hateful parents who told them negative things about themselves for years. They accepted them in time and soon became what they were told to become. I know a woman who was never all that heavy when she was growing up, who was told so many times that she was fat, that in her adult years she became very obese and soon hand health problems that put her life in danger. When I spoke with her family, they saw it all as genes and her eating habits. What they never realized was how their words were adding to her inner self and her life became one large poisonous potion that soon had her at the brink of death. Words can be some of the most unbuilding things at times to add to our life, yet in the same breathe they can be the poison that will one day kill us.
Accepting that we are not the perfect person, our minds has developed, it a important step. The next step, however, is more important. It is when we actually develop a realistic person that is reachable that we want to become, or that we already are.
Do you know who you want to be yet, now that you have left the organization, or are you still letting others tell you what to become to be "perfect?"
My thought
