finding humility
(~4.5 minute read)
Okay, it REEEEEEAAAALLLLLYYYY hit me like a thousand bricks a few weeks ago.
“There’s nothing I could have done” is what I kept telling myself and my therapist as I artistically emoted (aka cried).
Yesterday, I was “gifted” (as my spiritual mentors like to remind me) with an opportunity to reflect on my past.
A guy who took me on a few dates popped up on my feed. It had been a while since I saw his face, but there was something about his Instagram story that really gut-punched me.
I ended things prematurely to self-preserve because of the safety he showed (really introduced to) me. I was so unfamiliar with it that I confused it for “a matter of preference” – trying to convince myself that I didn’t “prefer” his “approach”.
It reeeeeaaaaaally washed over me y’all. Like big time.
I had been beating myself up about this for a while. Playing this mind game with myself: My past self (someone who did not know surrender nor a Higher Power) “should” have known my own blind spot. I was convincing myself that because I had the intelligence to arrive at it now, I should have had the intelligence to arrive at it then.
UGH SO MEAN, RIGHT!?
Back then, I was a human without Source. I did everything with my limited, conditioned human defects. Not with God’s strength, will, love, courage, power, bravery - you name it. It was literally impossible.
I’m processing in real time what I felt (some days, still feel). I think it’s important to identify these feelings and how I’m actively interrupting the “being mean and beating myself” up thing:
A yearning to retroactively compassion-ate. – OH MY GOSH, I am liiiiiiiving for the melancholy and drama in this sentence. Okay, no, but seriously. I feel this deep fire in my being to somehow reach back to the past version of myself, who was convinced she made a mistake, and hold her. To tell her that she did nothing wrong. To tell her that there’s no use in “wondering” why she was “so stupid and full of low self-worth”. To stop berating herself into doing the “right thing” next time, because there is no “right thing”.
I am like an iPhone. I only work if my battery is charged. – God is the Source that powers me to do something as simple as inhale. During that time, I didn’t know God. I was “touch and go”, constantly praying but taking things right back into my will. Realizing that the lack of God at the center of my life during that time, meant that I had no way of making a different decision, was humbling to say the least.
Liberated. – I’m resistant to using this word because I didn’t think liberation felt this way. It’s liberating to be awakened to the fact that I am small. I am 1 out of 8,254,611,704 people and counting. If I were that “big”, there would be no need for the other 8,254,611,703 people.
If there’s anything you take away, take this: humility is a tranquilizer. It grounds us. Restores us to calm.
It’s a gift that Earth is populated by millions of people. You weren’t born amongst millions of people in vain. We are here together, to do life together.
