The past few days, I've had a revelation and a coming to terms with something that has long evaded me: Acceptance and Celebration of Self.
I have not mastered nor fully attained this by any means, however, I feel there is a progression in this stage of development that hasn't occurred until now.
You may ask, what kind of acceptance do I mean, and what exactly am I celebrating/working on celebrating. And this is my answer to you:
Acceptance of ALL stages of my life
Acceptance of ALL selves; past and present
Celebration of ALL those stages and selves as they were and as it is/I am now
And, now, you may ask, what do I mean by stages of my life, and what do I mean by past and present selves/self. And this is my answer to you:
ACCEPTANCE and CELEBRATION of who I was, what I loved and cared about, what my interests, fears, insecurities, beliefs, ideas of importance were and what was to be pursued
This applies to early childhood, grade school years, Junior High School, Middle School, Senior High, college years and my 20's
I am CELEBRATING/working on celebrating and recognizing how I developed in areas such as artistic, mental, spiritual, emotional and physical growth
Instead of judging where I was at in terms of deficiencies and/or immaturity, I ACCEPT that it was what it was, I was who I was and I was at where I was at
I CELEBRATE how far I've come, how well I handled each stage, as well as, how I overcame the many obstacles in my path
I ACCEPT the times when my pace was slow, when I regressed, when I failed, when I handled situations poorly and times I smacked straight into those barriers and fell flat on my face
I ACCEPT what I looked like, what physical changes I went through/was going through (for better or for worse...ha :) and CHOOSE to look upon each stage's body with love, compassion and humor when necessary :)
It is far too easy for us to condemn our weaknesses, past selves and the choices we made or didn't make. Now, I am not trying to write another "self-help" or "everything is beautiful and nothing is wrong" article. There are many times when I couldn't help myself and when I currently can't help myself. Everything is not always beautiful, though life itself, with all its darkness and light is a thing of marvel. There are many times when we are not beautiful, perfect, great as we are nor fine where we are at.
Sometimes, we need to humble ourselves and accept our crap and frailty and admit we are WRONG, we are acting out of darkness and are not beautiful in our attitudes, speech, treatment of others and of ourselves. AND, there are times when we cannot accept, nor embrace things in our lives. We need growth. We need change. We need to learn to say sorry, I messed up, I am wrong, I have sinned, I have failed and I cannot stay like this. I NEED improvement and refinement and transformation.
No. The point of this blog/post is to relay a piece of my own personal journey of ACCEPTING, CELEBRATING and EMBRACING all that it means to be human, to be an individual and to stop tormenting myself with thoughts of guilt, remorse, disgust and disappointment in that girl/woman and how she has navigated/is navigating her life.
I hope you may also experience this kind of revelation and acceptance too. Peace.
