Defining your reality - For those still seeking their path
As the years go by you realize so much of your life is shaped by accidental events that require you to react to them, the notion of planning and shaping your life into something meaningful can become a non sequitur.
Cynical, pehaps, but if this is true, then what is left? The answer to the question is for a lifetime to reveal.
We hear so much of goals and how important they are to finding success.
Secretly, I sometimes think that much of our stress is grounded in chasing goals for which we have neither the inclination nor the aptitude. Many of us reject our natural aptitudes and the talents we have. We insist on becoming something else. Why? The question has perplexed me for years.
I suspect it starts with the early impressions we are all left with from our childhood. The desire for acceptance teaches most of us early on that the affirmation we need comes from fulfilling the wishes and needs of the prominent adults in our lives.
How your changing needs for affirmation affects who and what you are.
As we grow older the need for affirmation transfers to the adult institutions in our lives: our cultural values, our workplace, our church, our select group of friends - all influenced by the imprint within us that was shaped by the environment of our early years. By this time, the need for survival takes hold and our mental imprints are too grounded to change into what should have been.
Of course, all of this creates the filter by which we judge and view all the feelings and activities we experience in our journey to the end. This filter shapes our particular prejudices and perspectives, both individually and collectively. Primarily, because it is the subtle, but always present static that plays in the background of our thinking process.
Our need for affirmation numbs us into submission and deludes us with its virtuous resignation.
We grow so use to its presence, we ignore its power over us. However, we do so at our own peril.
There is a noted exception to this model. There are a few among us who see correctly and know what they do to survive is essentially meaningless to them other than providing a means to an end. They do not embellish, or try to justify their activities in “service for society” or other grandiose terms. They do what is necessary because it is necessary.
Simply meeting their responsibilities is a worthy goal unto itself.
A means to an end becomes their justification, and stoic acceptance of this fact creates its own type of begrudging affirmation - though not completely free, they may be the freest among us. And that is worth a great deal.
Brother Giovanni
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