Even if we cannot know many of the ultimate truths, we can always understand ourselves better. We can get clear on who we are, who we want to be and what is truly important to us. We can always understand life and the world better. We can always become better. We can always become more present and pay more attention to what is going on. We can always widen our perspective.
On the other hand, I don’t believe that self-improvement should lead us away from feeling worthy. And I don’t believe that life should be an endless quest of self-improvement either. So, what do I believe when it comes to this? That is what I am going to try and bring some more clarity into here.
In a paradoxical sense, we are all already worthy, at the same time as we all fall short of what we potentially could be. On the one hand, we need to be tough with ourselves and constantly push ourselves out of our comfort zones. And on the other, we need to be kind to ourselves, forgive ourselves for our mistakes and shortcomings, and allow ourselves to simply feel pleasure and enjoy life. And somehow, we need all of this, the tough struggles, as well as the soft and playful, to feel meaningful and enjoyable. There is no sense in struggling for struggling’s sake. And there is no sense in empty sensory gratifications either.
Where we need to begin, I believe, is in self-observation. We need to observe how we behave and speak, as well as what is going on inside our heads. This can be quite shocking at first. At least it was for me. When I started looking at myself throughout my everyday life, I found an almost entirely different person from who I thought that I was.
This is something I believe that we cannot get away from. If we wish to grow we must get to know ourselves.
If we want to do this in a healthy way, I believe that it is crucial that we compare ourselves not with others, but with who we were yesterday. I can honestly say that this has been a problem for me. When I see all of the people that have taken leaps out of their little selves and stepped into their bigger selves, I often feel discouraged. I’ve had to eat a lot of humble pie since the time when I walked around looking down at the world. And humble pie often comes with a bitter aftertaste of self-judgment and self-criticism.
Then, at the end of all of this, I believe that there is some point where we can give up all of this speculation about what things should be and what they shouldn’t, just let go, always act out of love and follow the flow of life. I believe that this is a really simple state. We just need to realize on a deep level that everything is okay and as it should be. You might look at the world and say: “Are you kidding me?!” But if everything is in God’s hands, how could it be otherwise? And maybe it’s just my ego that likes all this complexity. That enjoys these endless speculations about life and my being in the world. But so what? I like to think about what it means to be human in general and what it means to be me specifically. Even if it’s ultimately possible to just let go and allow God to carry me through life.
But I’m not there yet anyway, and in the meantime I need to think of how I best can live, grow and enjoy life while I’m still to a large degree governed by my ego. Besides, if I look at those that have arrived at their destination, it seems as if they all have had to take the road of complexity, before arriving at the simplicity that has been with them all along. And I have a feeling that when I reach it, I will look back at my journey, with all its struggles, pains and feelings of hopelessness, with nothing but joy and gratitude for all that it has entailed.
Photo by Nandhu Kumar on Unsplash
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