What If Your Whole Life Was Spent Trying to Be What Everyone Told You to Be?

I mean how would that shake out?

Is that a waste of a life?

Do others always give your purpose?

If a self directed life the intent or is everyone subject to the bending of wills?

I have done my best to be a good person.  And, for the most part, I think I have done a pretty good job.  I haven’t robbed millions of their retirements, or the masses from their peace of mind.  Drunk or sober, I really did try to be a good person.  And for the most part, I think I have succeeded.

It remains that I am selfish, self centered and self seeking.  This is a daily struggle which actually I am grateful for, because it causes me to have to inventory my behavior and watch for these traits daily...

Recently, I have been giving a lot of thought to the idea that I have always wanted this extraordinary life.  Not just a fabulous one, but one that is out of the ordinary. And when I review my life, I am proud of the risks I have taken.  The chances I have placed bets against.  I am grateful, for the most part, that I choose adventure over stability.  Excitement over security.  Change and chance over complacency.

As I move toward another birthday, I am brought up short at just how fucking amazing my life has been.  How often I have taken the road less traveled, thrown convention to the wind but also, how much I have judged myself against the yard stick of the convention of others...

I don’t think I realized this until more recently how much I tend to judge myself by rules and ideas put up by others...others who have not made the same or similar life choices.  Rules that I don't necessarily believe in. I can see, now, how often I made myself feel less than because while I didn’t want the ordinary life, I still felt like I had to fit within it.

One of the many gifts of aging, is that you have less fucks to give about what others think and say and tell you.  I guess when the time runs short, so do the fucks.  And I don’t mean this in an apathetic kind of way...I care deeply about the people in my life and their feelings and thoughts.  But I guess my ability to tailor myself to what everyone else wants for me is waning at a somewhat alarming rate...

For the most part, I have led a self directed life.  I have been the architect of my demise and my becoming.  Me and God that is.  I didn’t choose my career path because my parents wanted it for me.  I choose it because, well, I wanted the things in life that kind of career could provide me...

My attempts at conventional behavior and living are pretty laughable.  I can see that now.  I want to conform about as much as I want to have a root canal.  But it does strike me, why did I ever care about conformity anyway?

Safety.  Well, the guise of safety.  I know that I have gotten in line and said the things and done the things that are conforming because I wanted the validation and safety being a part of provides.  Except when you don’t really want to be a part of, and then are compelled to do things that fly in the face of convention, there will never be the safety one so wishes for.

I don’t think I have spent the whole of my life trying to be what others told me to be...but I have dabbled in it to my own dismay and detriment.

And one of the best parts of aging is that I care less and less about what is conventional and more about what it is that I want and need so that when I get to the end of my life, I am content with the manner and way I lived it.  Few regrets because I do not think no regrets is a possibility.

More than anything, I want to be free.

Free to love.

Free to live.

Free to be whatever version of myself reveals itself.

Free to be heard and to hear.

Free to move about my life.

Free to leave when I need to leave.

And, as we all know, freedom has a cost.  And I have been willing to pay it...and I hope that I continue to seek and find and heal and learn and hold space for all the different versions of myself that keep showing up.  And I hope, I really sincerely hope, I can be who I am with as few apologies as I can.  To know that while I am not the best person on this planet, I am not the worst.  And, every single day of my life, I get up and work towards being my most authentic self.  And living my life being who I am instead of who others tell me to be...

Again, still...