A TIME TO REFLECT.

This time of year is a time of reflection – a time to look back and reminisce about days, months and years gone by.  For myself – I don’t look at my past with regret as my past was about learning and growing.  Looking at my life now, I can’t believe how much I have changed – all for the greater good.  My blog today is emotionally therapeutic (for me) and I hope that it allows you to perform the same exercise to determine how much you have changed and hopefully for your greater good and for the planet.

Here is a list of what I wanted or desired at the age of 21:

• To become wealthy.
• Have a great job that paid really well.
• Have a really expensive car.
• Have friends that were influential and wealthy.
• Buy a big condo or house.
• Party, party, party.
• Have expensive clothing.
• Have expensive furniture.
• Have a rich partner/boyfriend.
• Be away from my family.
• Have the latest gadgets.
• Travel.
• Not care for anyone else but myself.

Today – my priorities have changed.  Maybe it’s because I learned that many of the things I wanted would only bring me temporary satisfaction.  I was at a place where I didn’t really like too many people and didn’t really like myself.  I was too busy trying to be liked and to please everyone else but myself.  I only cared about how I looked, what I had and how drunk I was.  Well, that has completely changed (although, I still love my shiraz, but in a completely different way).

What is important to me today and what do I really want……

• I would love to have friends who don’t judge me on my lifestyle choices (especially being vegan).
• I want to be more connected to the planet and help her heal.
• I want people to be authentic about who they really are.
• I want to live a more sustainable life.
• I want people to start a REVOLUTION OF LOVE.
• I would love if people turned off their televisions.
• I would love if people really thought for themselves and not be distracted by government and corporate lies.
• I would love if people spread love and positive energy.
• I love that I value family more than ever before.
• I don’t need MORE, I need LESS.
• I am satisfied in whatever I do.
• I am not plagued by wanting or needing more money or financial wealth.
• I don’t need a BIG car.
• I don’t need a BIG house.
• I don’t need superficial friends who only care about themselves and being distracted.
• I love those who are eccentric.
• I love people who don’t conform.
• I love people who think outside the box and without judgements.
• I love being GAY.
• I love being authentic.
• I love ME.
• I love animals.
• I love the planet.

There is no point in thinking about the past anymore – it is gone and there is nothing any of us can do about it.  The past has passed.  There is nothing I can do about the future – I have no idea what will happen.  I don’t enjoy making long-term plans.  I don’t want to work my life away to save money for a future I can’t foresee.  What I can do – is live for this moment.  The moment that is happening right now.  I love that I am expressing myself via the words I am typing right now.  I feel alive, I am in the moment and I am enjoying every minute of it.  Should I die right now – at least I  would have died doing something I love.  I am doing what I am meant to be doing – at this moment, right now.  I am writing these words, every once in a while – glancing at my dog and feeling the warmth of my fire.  I am so glad that I have changed and am living the life that is no-one else’s but my own.

What will you find out about yourself by reflecting on your past?

Together, we can make the world a more positive one!

WHAT MASK(S) ARE YOU HIDING BEHIND?

How many of us have hidden behind a mask and how many of us continue to hide behind masks?  Many of us are hiding behind a mask for a number of different reasons.  Fear, hurt, anxiety, acceptance, anger or for many other reasons.  Hiding behind these masks allows us to feel like everything is okay without dealing with the real reasons as to why we put on these masks in the first place.  The masks give us a false sense of security.

There was a point in my life when I couldn’t live without a mask.  I was able to be two different people without disrupting my ‘perfect world’.  I wore that false façade for years bringing much turmoil, confusion, fear, anger, hate and anxiety into my life which reached a crescendo in my 21st year.  Due to the emotional turmoil that wearing my mask caused, I decided it was time to remove it and to begin to live a more authentic life.  By removing this mask, I was able to release the fears and stereotypes that I held about my sexuality.  This was the first time in my life that I actually faced my fears and anxiety and slowly began to remove many of the other masks I was hiding behind.  It was liberating and I finally felt free. 

If you continue to hide behind a mask, you will never be free to truly live an authentic life.  Be present in how you live and how you treat others – make an effort to identify the incidents in your life where you decide to put a mask on and when to take that mask off.  What would happen if you didn’t hide behind a mask anymore, what is the worse thing that can happen?  Will you lose the approval of others? 

Please Hear What I’m Not Saying

Don’t be fooled by me.
Don’t be fooled by the face I wear
For I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
Masks that I’m afraid to take off
And none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that’s second nature with me,
but don’t be fooled,
for God’s sake don’t be fooled.
I give you the impression that I’m secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me,
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water’s calm and I’m in command
and that I need no one,
but don’t believe me.

My surface may be smooth but
my surface is my mask,
ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don’t want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.
That’s why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation,
my only hope, and I know it.
That is, if it is followed by acceptance,
If it is followed by love.
It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself
from my own self-built prison walls
from the barriers that I so painstakingly erect.
It’s the only thing that will assure me
of what I can’t assure myself,
that I’m really worth something.
But I don’t tell you this. I don’t dare to. I’m afraid to.

I’m afraid you’ll think less of me,
that you’ll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
I’m afraid that deep-down I’m nothing
and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate, pretending game
With a façade of assurance without
And a trembling child within.
So begins the glittering but empty parade of Masks,
And my life becomes a front.
I tell you everything that’s really nothing,
and nothing of what’s everything,
of what’s crying within me.
So when I’m going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I’m saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I’m not saying,
what I’d like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say,
but what I can’t say.

I don’t like hiding.
I don’t like playing superficial phony games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me
but you’ve got to help me.
You’ve got to hold out your hand
even when that’s the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes
the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you’re kind, and gentle, and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings —
very small wings,
but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling
you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator–an honest-to-God creator —
of the person that is me
if you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
you alone can remove my mask,
you alone can release me from the shadow-world of panic,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please choose to.

Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach me
the blinder I may strike back.
It’s irrational, but despite what the books may say about man
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls
and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
with firm hands but with gentle hands
for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder?
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet
and I am every woman you meet.

       By Charles C. Finn

****Please note – Photo image from the internet, not my own image****

Together we can make the world a more positive one.