I once read that we all start out from birth with an innate knowing of what is right and what is wrong. That somewhere along the way we lose the ability to listen to that voice inside of us. We get confused and bombarded, distracted by all the messages we receive while growing and becoming.
It has taken me years to get wiser. Not wise, just wiser. To realize it's okay to have been naive, weak, and vulnerable. To stop kicking my ass for having faltered under pressure or to be afraid to fight for what I innately knew was right or fight against what I knew to be wrong. I wanted to be righteous, to use my art to make others think about what we do to one another and what we can do FOR one another. I wanted my conscience to be clean so that I might enjoy the full breadth of what life has to offer. I just wanted everyone to be nice and to be nice to everyone else, but I started to think that an impossible task: a naive pipe-dream, so to speak. Not how the real world is, I was told. So, I found myself reacting to what the "real world" was throwing at me, and I didn't like the person I was becoming.
Now, I'm learning to step out of the way of my own ego and let go of those things which have, in the past, caused me to change course, stray from the direction I always believed was mine to take.
I'm learning to embrace the duality of the person I am: a lover, a giver, a truth teller and true believer; able to draw a sword swiftly and without mercy, to see through the facade of another and detest what I see, able to turn my back on someone or something and not look back, never look back. I'm beginning to understand and accept myself entirely.
Forgiveness, understanding and acceptance, it seems to me, should first and foremost be for ones self. For if one cannot embrace and understand the self in totality, how can he or she become whole?
We've all heard it said, so many times it's become cliched, that all one needs to live in is the NOW. Do we really understand the depth of such a statement? We cannot undo the past. How far back would we, I, need to go, and what different path (not necessarily better) would it take us on? Can we worry about the future? I don't know. Are we even guaranteed a future? I suspect not. So, all we really have is the NOW. That's it. Wisdom and understanding are all we can hope for in order to attain peace of mind and the ability to interact properly in a world filled with beauty as well as ugliness.
What the hell am I rambling on about?
It's alright to get tangled up. It's human to make mistakes, errors in judgement. What's important is what we learn from them about ourselves and about others, but learn to lay the blame at the feet of those it belongs to. If it belongs to you then it does, and that's just the way it is, not the way it needs to be.
Everything we've been through in life is beautiful, thorns and all. Everything we've experienced, learned, and suffered is beautiful. It's all necessary so that we may become wiser. It's not about redemption or penance in the religious sense, it's about reconciliation and atonement to yourself for having been a human being on a journey back to the beginning when we all innately knew what was right and what was wrong; and to listen to that little voice inside of you who knows the difference.
This may seem almost too simple, and for those of us who are in the muck and mire of life's troubles and bullshit it sounds trite, or preachy, or inapplicable. I say it's worth pondering, for Wisdom is the ability to know the difference, as has been said. And beginning to know the difference is making all the difference for me.
Wendy Dennison
