In Memoriam

Have no fear. Nobody close to me has passed away recently.

What am I memorialising? The old (or probably more correctly) the current version of me. I have embarked on the long, sometimes emotional but highly rewarding journey of self discovery and shedding of as much of the formerly timid, anxious, self critical me.

I recently had cause to look at my life in a very detached way, in order to bring some semblence of, er, order to it. It was primarily about looking at my circumstances objectively and seeing where I could relieve a lot of the stresses that I was feeling. I wanted to find ways to make my life better in some practical and meaningful ways and I’ve managed to do so successfully to this point but these successes are more about finances and other things like that.

The biggest challenge I face now – as I have done over my life time – is to release all other negative things, bits and parts of me that have held me back. For example, throughout my life and especially when I was in my teens and twenties, I had always for whatever reason wanted to fit in so badly that I perhaps compromised the real me. I felt that the real me was not worthy of showing to the world because I had such a great fear of people not liking who the real me was.

So what have I done or am I doing to make a difference? Firstly, I have allowed myself to like myself. I have quirks, personality traits and interests that may or may not be akin with or shared by others but I said to myself “who cares”.

In addition, I was raised to be well mannered, polite, respectful, courteous and loving and I just said to myself that if I live my life by those qualities then it won’t matter a jot about my quirks, traits and interests because people will appreciate me treating them as well as any human being can expect. I have never spurned anyone because of their differences and I just needed to afford myself the same courtesy, if it is indeed even a courtesy. We’re all the same – we all have hearts and minds. The only things that differ are the people in our families and the circumstances of our upbringing.

My journey is by no means complete and in a lot of ways I hope it never ends. It is indeed true that you are never too old to learn, and this to me is especially true when it comes to self improvement. The journey starts with positive self acceptance and allowing yourself to be imperfect. It’s what makes you YOU. I finally have.