HONESTY MONTH: DAY 30: “Never separate the life you lead from the words you speak.” ― Paul Wellstone
The greatest challenge is for me to meet my life, not with what I would like to be or do, but with what I CAN be or do.
I am a hope-to-die people pleaser. I want to be liked and admired and invited to participate in everything that is fun or social. That does not allow for full honesty and integrity. I am not, as none of us are, able to perform all of that without paying big prices for my presumption.
Interestingly, age progresses along with recovery. Some of the challenges of trying to be everything for everyone and still be present for myself are physical and time demands that I no longer want to juggle. I want to be sure that the quality of the life I am living is integral.
That is the first restriction. The second is that my age is becoming a factor in what I can physically allow to be part of my experience.
What happens is that I lose my integrity because I say I will or can do things, and then must bow out of them when the time comes, because I am not able to do all the things my (Screaming Purple Monkeys) brain tells me I can.
I get disappointed. I disappoint others. This is not me being fully honest at all times. It is better when I just learn to say NO to those things that are not part of what I believe I need to be doing today. I am learning, yet again, to speak the truth of who I am and what I am willing to do and what I am NOT willing to do.
It is a constant juggling of ideas, personalities, expectations, and options. On the chips I have taken every year since I got here, there is a statement: “To thine owns elf be true.” This is the struggle, for me. I am so codependent that I think it is selfish to say NO when it is an opportunity to be of service. What I really need to look at more consistently is WHO I am being of service to.
I cannot do everything that I think I can. I recently heard someone repeatedly say something that was interesting, and quite offensive in some ways. And I realized there I was again! Doing those things that were not of any particular interest to me, just to do them! They may have served at some level for others, but they were not what resonated with me. Oh!
So, we practice this thing. We do this dance. And we get to move back and forth into and out of the stuff that we came here to heal. It is lovely, and; hopefully, at the end of the day, honesty is what we walk.
