I can believe with everything in me that I am a lion, I may even have the heart of a lion.  That does not in fact make me a lion.  No matter how much I believe, how much I feel it—it doesn’t change who I am.  But what we have lost sight of is the fact that being who we are doesn’t mean we can’t be who we want to be.  I can believe with all my heart that I am a 6’10” model who can sing better than anyone in the world and it will NOT change the fact that I barely touch 5’ and I am ok-ish at singing certain songs.  That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy singing and having fun with it or that I can’t learn how to sing better—but I will not be able to change that I barely touch 5’.  There are intrinsic parts of us we can’t change but that doesn’t mean we can’t become something closer to what we see inside, it doesn’t mean we can’t hone the skills to become the best version of what we see—it doesn’t matter if others don’t see it that way.  The point is matching the action with how we feel, not to make others believe/see/feel/do how we do.  That’s manipulation and bullying.  It isn’t anyone’s responsibility to figure me out and treat me how I see myself—it’s my job to be who I need to be and express that consistently to the world. 

Society has a lot of healing to do.  We’ve been grossly misinformed that we are the ones who need tending to, that the world somehow owes us this weird honor of somehow stopping for us, people somehow treat us exactly as we think in our minds, that the world sees us as we see ourselves, that we will get what we want simply because we think it.  It’s a real tough lesson for people to grasp that we have this so backwards. The world literally owes us nothing.  We are here by the grace of some divine gift, divine timing, divine presence that we can’t perceive with any senses yet we feel it all around us.  We can’t control it but we are of it and part of it.  That gives us no dominion over anything in this world but our own autonomy, our own presence, our own ability to recognize and utilize our gifts for the benefit of the world that sustains us without question or real demand beyond “Don’t intentionally fuck it up or we will move on to fuck around and find out on a whole new level.”  Yet somehow in spite of all the mistakes we make as humans, as much as we seem determined to destroy ourselves as much as we still have the audacity to believe we are owed something, the Earth keeps spinning and keeping us alive.

So with in this vast expanse of space and time, we are somehow afforded the gift of being here right now.  We are gifted the ability to find this balance between knowing we are meant for something greater and bringing that gift to the world while also understanding those gifts are ours to use and harness, but only on borrowed time.  The more we use those gifts for the benefit of the world, the greater return.  This existence, while it may seem to be all about us and how much we can get for as little effort as possible, is truly about the inverse. What we put in determines what comes out.  I don’t want to waste my time telling people how to see me, what to think about me, how to treat me—some of those things are simply lessons we missed as kids and have nothing to do with us anyway.  I would rather spend my time developing my gifts and sharing them with the people who get it, the people who resonate with that message.  I don’t want to spend my time fighting to be who I am or to make sure the world sees me as I see myself.  It’s far easier to simply be ourselves and go about our business.  We get more done that way.

This piece isn’t meant to disparage anyone or discourage anyone from going for their dreams—in fact, it’s quite the opposite.  The point of going for dreams has nothing to do with how people see us.  It has nothing to do with convincing others of anything about who we are.  This is about shifting our perspective to realize that how people see us has no impact on how we see ourselves, how we feel about ourselves, or how we think.  We are the only ones who prevent ourselves from getting where we want to be, from doing what we want to do.  It’s our belief in ourselves and what we think we can do that pushes us forward or stops us in our tracks—no one else’s.  Humans are simultaneously super smart and super dumb and we all operate on context and experience—none of which is the same for anyone—yet we believe we somehow need everyone to think and see as we do in order to have any value.  We are gifted the differences of opinion, perspective, and desire so we can learn from each other and so we can HELP each other and so we can return something of value to the world.  So we can spend a little less time focused on making people see/think/feel something and spend more time making sure our actions align with how we see/think/feel.  It makes all the difference.