“When you continuously swim by the waters of people that don’t have the depth to understand you, you will eventually drown in all of their misunderstandings of you.  You don’t have to keep diving down to reach people who consistently cut the air from your authenticity,” Bill Chapata.  What an amazing follow up to our talk about teamwork on Saturday.  That was one aspect of teams and finding support I didn’t talk about in my last piece: we need our team to consist of people who understand us.  It does no good if we dim our light and diminish our gifts to fit in with people who don’t understand (or who choose to not understand) who we are.  We feel like crap when we are with people who misunderstand us, and even moreso when we are around those who choose to misunderstand us.  I point out choice in these last two sentences because people have the capacity and the capability to observe other’s viewpoints, but we are more concerned with being right, so we choose to feign ignorance. Oftentimes we are so afraid of being alone that we don’t consider if people are really good for us.  Then we choose to drink the poison because we don’t think we can find clearer water.  Soon enough we start to believe we are what other people say we are and we don’t even know ourselves. 

In drinking that poison of misunderstanding, we start to misunderstand ourselves.  It’s amazing how much we can convince ourselves to stop believing what we feel inside, to stop trusting what we know about ourselves instinctually simply by listening to those around us.  We were never meant to create an interpretation of ourselves based on what others saw in us.  We were meant to build from the blueprint and create the foundation of who we are and simply be that construct, a piece of divine work.  The statue doesn’t try to form itself into something else when the creator is done with it, neither should we.  Our DNA does more than simply keep us alive—it tells us exactly who we are down to the things we enjoy, our talents, our feelings, our creativity, and yes, our purpose.  It’s all there, which is why it’s so vital to listen to the pull/call/feelings we have.  Instead of swimming in murky waters, we learn to find our own spring and navigate to the river.  Once we are in clear waters, we see ourselves for who we truly are.    

There comes a point in searching for self, in finding authenticity, in genuine self-expression that we start to suffocate if we don’t honor the feelings we have inside, if we don’t honor the call of what we feel and what we see.  We cut off any chance of being who we are if we limit ourselves to those experiences and people around us.  We aren’t living our own lives at that point.  Not everyone is meant to understand us, and instead of looking at that as an insult, we need to look at it as a gift.  Those who don’t understand us offer us the opportunity to understand and express ourselves.  They give us the chance to be who we are and define who we are and to respect and be comfortable as that person.  We learn to stand on our own legs and then the team we need finds us.  When what we are not falls away, what we are remains.  Don’t let our environment choke the life out of us.  Don’t drown in the waters we can simply walk out of.  We need to seek a place that encourages and supports our growth, and that includes the players around us.  We have a choice, just as they choose to (mis)understand, and I choose to understand. I choose to live.