the entirety of my childhood, i was taught to believe that being competitive was an asset.
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especially when it comes to playing sports, it’s easy to fall into that mentality.
surrounded by parents and coaches who live off this single source of sustenance.
pressuring us, in our disadvantaged states as adolescents…
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we want to please to a degree.
life is so much easier when we can all peacefully agree.
so, we feel that we need to perform,
transforming chaos into harmony,
not only to get noticed favorably—
to “be something,”—
but, because we crave the acceptance that comes with an external accomplishment.
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we are premature addicts to external gratification.
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that striving becomes our identity.
practice is a way of life.
games are the truest test there is to determining our worth. we play our best so that the drive home doesn’t add to the crippling self-rejection we are already putting ourselves through.
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competition.
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i was not taught how to be supportive of others, especially women, in a healthy way.
rather, i was conditioned to covet other people’s lifestyles and attributes.
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it poisoned me, for a long while,
because my mental framework determined my well-being in comparison to others’ perceived well-beings.
wading in a shallow puddle of lack,
as if what someone else had could never be mine,
stemming from a larger problem:
not loving myself for who i am and all that i already have.
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competition = comparison.
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it’s rooted in “having more.”
and instagram highlights A LOT of that.
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luckily, i noticed this piece of myself because it was continually putting me at a disadvantage.
so, it became one of the many facets that i asked myself to improve.
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the reason i noticed this growth margin today is because i texted two women i know, and the responses i received were notable.
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one was my yoga teacher, who is a warrior goddess on the outside, and fresh caramel on the inside. she has pushed me more than anyone in the last couple years, but with a subtle grace that motivates rather than dejects.
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i texted her that “she is looking fit,” alongside a “thank you for class today.”
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she texted me back like 5 times.
“i love you.
you’re the best.
so glad you were in class.
i love you.”
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the other was an old friend from high school basketball who is on the path to becoming a lawyer and starting her own private practice.
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i had reached out to her with a professional question, and she went out of her way to find a link for me that would guide me in the right direction.
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as we all know, that could have cost me $500 and an hour-long phone conversation, but she was extending her hand outward to me because neither of us live in this competitive-rigid space of “have mores and have lessers.”
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i am pretty sure this space is called, “respect.”
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its funny because so often i’ve spoken with single, female friends who rejected the idea that self-love and respect were the internal qualities preventing them from a meaningful relationship with a potential mate.
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i don’t have close relationships to these women anymore, but it would be interesting to know if they still hold that to be true.
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i’m not one to say that self-love is or isn’t the reason why because the self-love and respect i held for myself when i met my partner is nowhere near what it is now.
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(my partner has clearly catalyzed many processes along my path… i am still not quite sure how. as if the timing was coincidental (i don’t believe in coincidences) or he is a part of a larger divine plan for both of our individual and collective growths (yeah, that sounds right). our relationship will take the entirety of a book to explain… some day. until then, he also serves as a marker along my growth trajectory).
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there is this little voice in the back of our heads—the ego—that takes in the world around us and determines what we can and cannot do, creating self-doubt.
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when we let it be the rooster ruling the pen, we limit ourselves.
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right, obviously.
so, the question becomes:
how do we go from ego to enlightened?
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an imprecise mixture of intention, trust, love, honesty, patience, and faith.
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during the time i left unaccounted for in my 3-year timeline on my instagram post yesterday, i was in bed.
yep, that’s what i said:
IN BED for MONTHS.
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that’s a HUGE reason we invited Franklin into our worlds:
to inspire me to grasp something tangible again.
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because, something was happening to me that wasn’t depression or a quarter-life crisis.
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it was a death.
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a death of every belief, memory, thought, or person that was stunting my growth into my becoming who i really am.
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when you are dying a death such as this—due to its taboo/unexplored nature—you often don’t know that that’s what’s happening.
instead, you think you have lost your mind because you have zero desire to be a real person anymore.
you’d rather lie in bed crying or sleeping, anxiously awaiting the sun to set with the nightly prayer that tomorrow will be different.
and, then, it’s not.
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your hope dissolves and your patience runs thin until the pain is so unbearable that you give up.
surrender.
the fight has been knocked out of you, and the universe is ready to move in and show you what you have spent all this time/energy resisting.
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poof!
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your heart is goo.
you feel every single inch of existence within each of the 32 trillion cells that vibrate consciousness, blood, oxygen, waste, and organic matter throughout your body.
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transformation.
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the world and life is brand new.
the opportunity to start over.
to meet new people with the boundaries you once lacked in place
and the self-respect you never quite knew how to embody.
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that agonizing walk through hell and back charred the mental and emotional hardwiring of the past, giving you the permission to take ownership of your path and to align it with your soul.
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the ego’s demise begins the moment you ask it to.
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your soul serves as fodder for
alchemical forces of nature.
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you can do anything, now.
because you did not die.
instead, you let go.