Authentic Living

March appears to be a month of meltdowns…

Why exactly, I am uncertain, but my guess is it has something to do with being shortly after Valentines Day and Spring being just around the corner. This is purely hypothetical, but oddly, it seems to make sense on a lot of levels.

Relationships are incredibly difficult! Do not let anyone talk you out of it! They require work and a daily choice to love someone more than you love yourself. And that is hard to do some days! In the past week, two of my close friends have experienced heartbreak on very intimate levels. And each of them asked me, “how far should I go for love?”

Umm… well, that’s a good question! I don’t know…

But I have being thinking about this a lot lately and I feel like when you ask a question like that, you are implying that the locus of control lies within you… that one day you can wake up and chase after a certain person or a specific vision of love… And when that option doesn’t work, you can quickly dispose of the pain of a broken heart…

I feel like the issue is, how can you live authentically and in turn authentically love? Can you vividly exist as yourself? How patiently and gently can you embrace yourself as you ride the waves of passion, happiness, remorse, and grief? Is it possible to live fearlessly with the acknowledgment of your own limitations?

One of the biggest lessons I learned this year was to allow fear and uncertainty to enter my life. I allowed myself the freedom to experience emotions previously untouched. And through experiencing these emotions, I found they aren’t so scary.

The reason we fear the unknown is because we do not know what to expect.

But if we expect uncertainty, we find it not as ominous as we think. One of my favorite authors wrote: “We know when we’re in the company of someone who has cut through hesitation to be brilliant, ridiculous, gentle and natural; as they demonstrate the most compelling and authoritative quality there is.” I want that. I want to feel authentic and confident without fear.