Plato believes the idea of becoming, forever changing and in a state of flux is characterized by opinion and subjective belief and is molded from or shaped out of a sense of being. He also believes that being is characterized by reason, thought, ideas and considered the higher form of knowledge. I am going to go out on a limb. I am no scholar, but would it then be fair to state that you can’t possibly become someone different if you lack the knowledge of who you are at the core of your being?
When I began therapy in 2019, I created this illusion that I would find my true self. Upon reaching this destination everything in my life would make sense and the rest would be unicorns and rainbows. Every struggle I had faced, every trauma I had experienced, every good or bad decision I had made somehow explained, categorized, and forever a distant memory. Sunny skies would greet me on the way to living a life based on authenticity, truth, compassion, empathy. I would become…
Four years later, imagine my surprise, at how many days the skies ahead are menacing and threaten to erupt in a downpour, lightning and thunder coming from every direction. My initial reaction to the ever changing landscape was frankly….what the actual ____? Collectively I had spent weeks in therapy only to find myself falling on my face, inserting my opinionated foot into my mouth, or reducing those around me to tears or worse. It appears that all the therapy in the world couldn’t make me become anyone. I was fighting a battle against someone I didn’t know. That someone was me.
I believed my state of being was wrapped up in tangible titles. I am a daughter, sister, aunt, friend, mother, grandmother, co-worker, wife, confidant, lover, and the list could go on and on. For some I am a source of pain for others a source of joy. I am a carefully curated list of descriptions. I am intelligent, funny, sarcastic, biting. A raging dichotomy of painfully honest and even more painfully dishonest, patient and impatient, cruel and kind, rigid and soft, emotional and logical, loving and cold.
All of these colorful titles and descriptions don’t accurately unveil the core of my being. Funny enough as I watched Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 with my incredible 16-year-old son this weekend, I realized that there is a reason that Groot has always been my favorite character. His eloquently spoken answer for all things, “I am Groot” always being interpreted by those around him, those who love him, exactly the way it was meant to be heard. Spoiler alert – at the end; Groot very plainly states “I love you guys!” in English. It hit me that in the end, we finally understood what his friends already knew, that Groot was in fact, love. It was then that I understood that the essence of every single human is love. We are love. Our being is love. Regardless of what happened after we took our first breath; trauma, good or bad parenting, illnesses, losses, injuries – we started out as love. Marianne Williamson sums this up in her book Return to Love with this statement, “We aren’t bodies at all; who we are is the love inside of us, and it is that love alone that determines our value.”
You can become and are becoming a host of things throughout the time gifted to you in this life. Instead of focusing on that next job, relationship, being a parent, a grandparent, a partner – reach deep, to your very core, and be love. Imagine! Wouldn’t that be breathtaking?
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