Ourselves

I know without a doubt that I'd get a lot of arguing on this one from many different groups of people. I challenge you to hear me out on this subject. It is my life mantra that you can not give anything you do not have, yet I see the people around me struggling to do just that. It wasn't long in my childhood that I realised we didn't work on all four cylinders if you will. There wasn't an undertone of "team" in the house that each person born into the current family was one more valuable team member. First, our job as a team is to pull together and understand we have one more person here to feed, bathe, and cuddle with so that they feel loved. Once that part of the life is underway, we are to instill value in them. They are to become the best human being they can possibly be. I don't see parenting being viewed as a gift of life that allows you to instill value in someone else while also doing so for Yourself. I see it as a more obligational status more than anything. For me the depth of knowing "yourself" comes from a place called the beginning. What type of beginning did you have? What was taught to you about your existence and how it impacted the family? When do you recall that being alive brought more prosperity to the whole team? Did you learn that everything you do for yourself and for others can be the deciding factor between success or failure? Once again, I stress that everything comes from your beginning. You can not be feeling valuable just because you're alive. It is to be given to you each day by your parents. You are to be taught value from the smallest parts of yourself. By learning about your body and your brain. By taking on more responsibilities and handling them well. By seeing things through you are building value and learning the value of being responsible and building on that. Sounds like a no brainer but I can't sit here and tell you 3 people who really have ever said those exact words to me about their parents and what they call their childhood. If you're one of the few who have had it, kudos to you and your families for they are no doubt reaping the benefits for living in a way that is valuable and places value on others. It can be done. It can be learned if it wasn't taught to you in your childhood. I wanted so badly to understand what my value was as a young child but the more I sit and think on what it was that I did as a child the more I remember the repetitiveness that was school and church. I don't remember much in between there. I know it's mainly because of what I was experiencing at home but we weren't alone on that matter at all. I've heard it said that you send your kid to school 8 hours a day and only an hour to church on Sundays. How are we going to catch what the brain is developing on if we don't spend time investing in the children. Isn't having children a choice to bring life into the world. "TO INVEST" in them? Once again with sadness, I sit here and wonder what most parents think makes them good parents and what their job is as a parent? I find most parents act as glorified babysitters. Just making sure the human doesn't die til the end of the day. Reality is that this behavior has it's drawbacks and this is what happens when we bypass the essential state of knowing our own value. It has been my experience that once we have gone so far feeling like a burden or like our single existence has no bearing on making the world a better place then do not make the choices to help the world around us by taking care of ourselves completely. We have to see that our whole body, choices, finances, emotions, thoughts, words, spirituality make an impact on the world around us. WHY? Because we are valuable. If we don't start from a state of awareness that we are valuable then the latter happens and we feel insignificant and worthless. Many times in my life when I thought those feelings were being lifted away, I was filling the voids with things or people (mainly cute boys). It allowed me to stave off the feelings of not being enough for a short while. Only problem was the bandaid only kept away those feelings while I was taking care of an immediate need. I wasn't coming from a place of total value in my whole body and understanding that my value came from the moment my conception had begun. God had placed value in me even though my family had not been able to mentor that in me. It wasn't unusual for me to be in deep thought with God about the value he placed on each person's life. If he had done that and it hadn't been mentored in me to be seen and felt on a daily basis then what is a person's recourse for not having what they need to survive? Change. It meant starting with myself. So that my whole self mattered I had to start over. I was surrounded by people who weren't living by that mantra of self, so it was a painful slow process to uncover things deep in my childhood. My whole approach to life to not be in secret didn't seem to be in the water supply around town so I seemed to be different than the people I was around. It did hurt on some level but the more I lived life the more I realized no one was without some dirty little secret. They just weren't as bent on dealing with it as I was. I wanted the easy life, ya know. HA! Some pipe dream that was. I have had just the opposite. Struggle after struggle after struggle. At the same time not a hair out of place. I was so blessed even from the beginning that no matter what has been thrown at me, I see the value in myself and that is what allows me to face even the most disastrous of issues in my life. If we had been taught the value of "Ourselves" from a young age we would have the ability to stand up more quickly and take the responsibility of our consequences. I know we will never be without challenges as humans and this isn't about bypassing anything in this life. It's about facing this life. Period.