“All of your life will be judged, none of that matters.  What matters is the condition of your soul,” source unknown.  I’m not a particularly religious person but I have strong belief and faith in the soul and our purpose here as well as the connection to something bigger.  Well, at least I believe it exists, I haven’t been very good about always staying connected myself.  Regardless, I interpreted this quote as something bigger as well.  I know our actions aren’t always a good indicator of our condition, our thoughts, and beliefs.  People are reactive creatures and we will respond based on what we know from previous experience about how to respond to any type of stimuli.  Actions do matter in the regard that our actions have consequences and impact that expands beyond our daily functions.  With that being said, we can’t always judge actions at face value.  We need to understand the intent behind them.  We also need to be able to understand our own intentions when we choose to take actions.

Intention can be examined without looking at the soul because intention speaks to everything from survival, to relationships, to finding joy, to addressing toxic situations in our lives.  There is a reason behind everything we do, even the subconscious actions and routines we settle into—those are often the most telling of our intention.  If we allow them to remain subconscious, we function like a robot and there seems to be no purpose.  If we look at the behaviors we developed to cope or even just as what we were taught, we can see patterns.  It takes a lot to look at this, but once we do, we know it’s worth it because we can understand if there is a reason for it or a behavior we can change.  Looking deeper and seeing that we eat a certain way out of fear can help us eliminate the fear and change the response we developed. That’s when progress happens.

There comes a point when we realize that we only have so much time on this Earth and we have to address whether or not we are going to waste it because one person (or even a group of people) had an opinion about it.  It doesn’t matter.  In one hundred years from now, chances are they may not even know our names.  I know I can’t speak to the character of my great-grandfather or my great-great grandfather—I never knew them.  I know parts of the story and how they got here, but I don’t know who they were or what they were like on a daily basis.  We too will become strangers to this world at some point, so we can let go of the pressure of thinking someone else’s opinion can determine our abilities.  Follow our desire, follow our passion, find our purpose and do that.  We are trained to judge and make determinations about people, we are not exempt from others judging us as well.  Some will say what we do is good, others will not, and what works for one may not work for the other.  So follow what we know is right for us.  We have one go around on this Earth, make it matter to ourselves.