“I was tame, I was gentle ‘til the circus life made me mean,” Taylor Swift.  I’ve NEVER been a “Swiftie”—I’m still not, but I will say there are a few lines in her work that have resonated with me lately.  In the spirit of continuing this discussion on pain, honest growth, and leaving space for the good to enter, I have really looked at my role here.  Asked what kind of light I am, what is the purpose of all this, and ow I want to contribute moving forward.  And I’ve seen the pain the systems have caused in my life, my family’s life, and the lives of my friends/the people I know.  Pain and grief touch us all, but it doesn’t need to be grief caused by each other.  I see the result of years of trying to find acceptance instead of working on accepting myself and I see the same in others.  I remember the open heart before all the crap happened.  There are these moments in our lives when we feel a fundamental shift toward a new clarity and we see everything that brough us to where we are, to how we are.  We were a certain way, we felt or believed a certain way until this one thing.

We can decide to understand that this has happened to all of us.  Even if the circumstances differ, we know we are not unique in that turning point.  No one wants to experience that and no one should have to but it will take a long time to consciously stop that behavior.  It will take a collective shift in purpose.  I think the thing that struck me from this line of Taylor’s was the “circus life.”  All of this life is a performance.  We think we need to be seen a certain way and that we need to act a certain way and we end up spending more time manipulating people and controlling their perception (or trying to control it) than we do managing our own energy and creating what we want.  When we create what we want we start emitting the energy of what we want rather than forcing people to bend to it, we automatically attract what it is we were working toward.  Maintaining our authentic self through all of the outside interference clears all that up and we never have to be mean, we never allow the outside to change who we are.

This world is about maintaining the strength that comes with being who we really are.  I will repeat it as often as necessary: not about maintaining power over others, but the power we have in who we are and not allowing outside influence to sway us from doing what is right or from fulfilling our purpose.  We have to be strong in who we are in order to not let the outside influence who we are.  Don’t let what happens and the actions of others make us mean or anything further from who we are.  Be calm.  Be tame.  Allow people to be who they are and that means allowing them to come and go as necessary.  Not everyone is meant to be with us forever.  We are the only ones who will be with us from the beginning to the end.  We all have lessons to learn but we don’t have to make them alter our course if we are already on the right path—and only we can know that.  Find what we connect with, what resonates, what feels right.  Take what we know and appreciate the time we have while we are here, make the most of it—don’t let it make us mean.  Don’t let it pass, don’t let the pain change who we are.  Be present and love what we have while we are here and leave that light behind.