2020 Vision
Some days are for working out and getting things done, and some days are for meditation and processing through writing and talking with my partner. Today seems to be the latter. This morning I woke up, journaled my usual three pages, and spaced out on FB for a while. I then put a coat and hat over the clothes that I had slept in, and went and sat by the willow tree in the 38 degree overcast day, and walked the dogs around the border of the neighboring field. My parents left for six weeks this morning to India, and I already feel the space that they have left behind. It resembles a windy freedom, as I naturally take the pressure off of myself when I have the added space from family, as well an almost immediate ability to look deeper into myself as an individual. I find myself today, looking at gender and my developing identity as a teenager. I find myself reflecting on all of the different peers that have been in my life, and where they reside today. Many girls I went to school with came from wealthy families, as my parents sacrificed a lot to get me and my sister the best education possible, and many have continued a life of privilege, and have preserved themselves quite well. Yet, many of these now women, I know are good people. I also know not all of my friends have emanated this upper middle class success, and rarely do we hear of the stories of the less fortunate. I suppose that could be one purpose to this blog, to display a different sort of success, and to exhibit and describe a real journey that is not necessarily the picture perfect life.
Issues stretching from gender to art to beauty to mental health, my life path has been one of self discovery. I do not have a lot to show for my work on this earth, as I have not been paid for the work I have done. I have sold the occasional painting, the occasional altruistic book, and had the occasional part-part time paycheck, but never more than to pay the current bills. Even though, I do not see my life as a failure, and I do not see all opportunity as dead, as I begin my forties. Rather, I am grateful for the inward journeys that I have taken, and am proud of the person I have become. I did not retain my figure, bear children, buy a large house, or crest a career, and I am ready to let these false wishes go. I have arrived where I am on purpose and for a purpose. People like Bernie Sanders are my heroes, and the every day disabled person or minority. This is not just a class I am taking at my bourgeois college. It is real life, and I can feel the pains of people who are real and that live real struggles. No longer am I just writing a spirited paper to raise awareness to my privileged classmates, I let them go long ago. In my opinion, you can be a loving person, even if you are on the top. We need to strip away the falsehoods of our lives to come together.
I could go on with this idealistic kind of reflection, and I finally am ready to relinquish the hope that my life would result with the privileged accomplishments of my classmates. I have not been at these schools for some time. I am grateful for my education and my upbringing. What brought me to this reflection this morning, was actually feelings of oppression of my gender fluid being, being bullied or ignored, and the fact that I never could quite grasp what it was that these successful and popular girls had no matter how hard I tried. Also, though I was cut deeply by some of these now women, I have appreciation for what they have accomplished, and am happy to be their friend on Facebook, or followed by them on Instagram. Who knows what divinity is at work regarding how our lives weave together and where we end up. We should not qualify who we are by what we have accomplished, and we should not value others solely by what their lives appear to be on the outside. Love is not quantifiable. Material possessions and accomplishments have no feeling. What we all long for is acceptance and love, and unfortunately our social media is not the best way to measure who has found love and acceptance truly in their hearts either from other people, themselves, or from God. I came from this privileged world, and it never really worked for my inner self. I can remember the feeling of the emptiness of inhabiting or being close to inhabiting physical or material beauty and perfection. It was very empty, and love and truth were not words that existed in abundance.
May we all find the acceptance, beauty, and love that is authentic and God. May we inspire realness, and find people that can lead us and inspire us in the direction if authenticity. Everyone, no matter what they look like or what they have, no matter how trapped they are either in the walls of privilege or poverty, can find a way to pursue love. This is how I know God does not have a physical appearance. The outer world is not what remains after we die. May you seek what is inside, as you reflect on the final days of 2019. We are entering a decade of true and perfect sight. May the year of 2020 help us and aide us, in finding what remains and what is real, an inner world and existence of love and acceptance for who we are, right where we are, no matter how far we have come.