Authenticity and Vulnerability
It’s really OK to not be OK
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Acceptance of Self and Others
As I write this article, I’m sitting in a cheap but overpriced hotel in Boise Idaho during a music festival, after a 2500 mile journey by airplane across the US from South Alabama. I’ve come here to reset my life after a series of events resulting in a separation from someone I had searched my entire life for and shared truly amazing memories with.
I’m a very physically and mentally tough person, however I am very sensitive emotionally and I find myself having to learn very nuanced mechanisms for coping with emotional distress and channeling it into something positive.
In the course of my nearly 40 years on Earth, I have nearly died numerous times and have likely experienced actual death during a few of these. During my birth my heart stopped multiple times and I was born nearly blind and without hip sockets. I overdosed on drugs and/or alcohol repeatedly in my teenage years. In spite of this, I am now in excellent shape and my eyes are improving every year thanks to my rigorous diet and exercise routine.
Mentally, I am capable of solving very complex problems and working on very challenging projects with little to no sleep, and today I don’t smoke, drink, or do any drugs whatsoever. I push myself to learn new things everyday.
Emotionally however, I’m a very sensitive person, which can be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on the circumstances. What many people can simply “get over” can affect me for weeks or even months.
Each of Us is Unique
It’s OK to be different. Some folks I know who believe that I should be more emotionally tough will call me when something breaks because I can work through a problem no matter how impossible it may seem. I can work in the Alabama heat for hours so long as I have plenty of water, then turn around and learn a new programming language in a day and write about it.
Because of this, I’m OK with shedding a tear at a sentimental scene in a movie, or seeking counsel with my friends and family when I miss someone and feel like I may have screwed up. I don’t have any shame in asking for help today because I have spent many years helping others when needed.
This is what makes society so great. I can build my friend a custom SDK in a matter of hours if necessary that outperforms anything you’ll find elsewhere, while my friend can perform a healing ritual over me and help me let go of major resentment and disappointment that impedes my spiritual progress.
I seek emotional support from the very people who seek technical support.
A Different Path
My path involves tremendous forgiveness and sending loving-kindness energy through emotional connections to people who need it the most. The friend or life partner or whomever else I send this energy to is unaware of this and I may appear somewhat crazy for even trying, but I can tell that it works.
Trying to get angry enough to write someone off doesn’t seem to really do much good. I always without fail end up feeling worse than before, having caused another person anxiety and stress. I still love this person, and now I’m even one step further than where I started from.
Each of us has a different way of handling things, and mine happens to be with sending more loving energy and caring more. When someone is acting out against me, it is because they are suffering, and possibly because I have caused them to suffer. When someone is suffering, that person needs more care and not less.
It’s easy to write people off. It’s easy to think we can replace people who meant so much to us when times get hard because we don’t want to face ourselves and hold ourselves accountable for our own karma and the results of our own actions, which may include people who are pissed off at us.
Acknowledging Reality
What we often hear as “reality” is not reality itself. If someone comes to you with a pessimistic or defeated tone and says “you must accept reality” then this person is not working with reality itself, but rather an even more limited slice of reality than what we typically perceive anyway.
The reality is that we can change our circumstances, because they are not permanent. Even death is not permanent as energy cannot be created or destroyed. We are simply transformed into another dimension. In this way, we all live in the quantum field of infinite potential, and doing the difficult thing of loving and forgiving ourselves and others when it seems impossible — that is the right thing to do when given the option.
It’s OK to not be OK, and it’s OK to be angry with someone and still learn how to love and let go and forgive. Love with full intention. In fact, do everything with full intention, because intention is what creates our world. We build our lives from our thoughts and emotions, and the faster we can turn negative and painful thoughts and emotions into positive constructive ones, the better off we are as a society.
