Apples and Oranges

I once read a statement that someone had made. She spoke about how beautiful she was as a dark skinned girl by putting down lighter skinned women. She showed that she could only understand her beauty and ultimately her own value, through a process of comparing herself with another group and by insulting this group of people.

After that I came to a realization. It wouldn’t be considered very enlightened or profound by most but it might be a tool for someone’s emancipation.

I have found my liberation in completely understanding that my value as well as yours, is tied up in our novelty, in the uniqueness of our lived humanity, in our very essence as people.

Having being compared to other people for my entire life it has always been a struggle to see the value that I possess in and of myself. Seeing as we are all the result of the sum total of our experiences, the only way then that any comparison can be a valid one is if we were all the same as people, having had the same variables in life. In math I was taught to only compare like with like, apples with apples, never apples with oranges.

So why then do we base our idea of our own worth on how we measure up to other people and their achievements? Our idea of self worth can’t be built on whether we are as smart or as pretty as the next person. We even go as far as to put down other people in order to feel a little better about our own situations in life, whether this is done overtly or in the private recesses of our thoughts.

When we realize that our value lies in the virtue of simply being who we are then we might come into a new dawn in our own lives. We need to realize that we are enough as we are and that we are equal to the challenge that is our individual lives.

All you need to become a success in your life is within you and your new dawn simply can’t wait for someone else’s approval because it will never come.

The task we all have at hand is to make the most out of the variables that we have been given in order to live the best life possible

spaces inbetween

How large are the spaces between who you were, who you are and who you desire to be? I am closer today to being who I want to be than who I was yesterday.

Growth is not an easy process to go through because it requires you to be completely honest with yourself, to look at yourself not through the eyes of others and who they think you are but to look at yourself for who you know yourself to be.

For too long we simply move from one stage and one space into another without taking stock. As you are right now do you like who you are? Do you value yourself and hold yourself in high esteem? Are you working on who you are as much as you are working on what you are.

Too many of us work too hard on the external to the neglect of the internal.

I've decided to take care of myself from the inside out because when you are stripped of material trappings all you have is your character.

Without the cars, money and facades, when stripped to the bare essential, will we have enough to be enough or do you find yourself lacking in character and rich in the material?

The space between who I was and who I am is greater than the space between now and who I desire to be.

How big is that space for you?

A re-introduction

A journey to self, a short introduction.

I can remember the day when I fist met me, although not very vividly I'll admit. I met me through someone. This person was someone I had trusted until that point.

When she introduced me to me she told me who she thought I was but what she had thought was littered with inaccuracies and the words she spoke were a lie. A devastating lie that I would have to work for years to unlearn. A lie which I am still learning to unlearn.

Separating the facts from the fiction in her lie has been a struggle monumental.

I am growing in many ways and have since started to deconstruct the me that she had built in my mind in order to get a re-introduction to me and to reconstruct what she had ripped apart.