What You Should have Learned – Part One
I can sum up life in six words: “We aren’t. We are. We aren’t.” It’s what happens in between the We aren’t’s that’s what’s important.
I get some amazing thoughts in the shower. It is the other circle of Life. When we are young, we are ignorant (and in some cases stupid). As we grow older, we are supposed to grow and learn and become wiser, and when we figure most of it out and it finally starts to make sense, we want to pass along accumulated wisdom to help others more easily find their way along the path. Whoever said that hindsight is 20/20 was right. In looking back, if my classes learned what they were supposed to, life for them (and the rest of us) would be easier (it’s never easy).
First of all, you are really okay unless you aren’t (but most of us really are). There are always some people who like to come along and try to make you feel otherwise, but they are really the ones who have something wrong. If you are honest, you know exactly what I mean.
Something called physiognomy is defined first as the features of a person’s face, their facial appearance. It is also the art of discovering temperament and character from outward appearance. American poet Carl Sandburg took the idea and created a poem called “Phizzog” putting it all in perspective.
This face you got,
This here phizzog you carry around,
You never picked it out for yourself
at all, at all—-did you?
This here phizzog—-somebody handed it
to you–am I right?
Somebody said, “Here’s yours, now go see
what you can do with it.”
Somebody slipped it to you and it was like
a package marked:
“No goods exchanged after being taken away”—-
This face you got.
So you are born and you are who you are. It should be that simple, but with people’s insecurities and elective cosmetic surgery, people try to become someone else thinking that will make a difference. If you learn to love yourself (or even just like yourself), the rest doesn’t matter (or shouldn’t).
You are okay just as you are! Really.
More later.