Today I will accept, receive and allow kindness to me. I know there is some redundancy in repeating with subtle word changes the same idea….if you are like me it is necessary! They say charity begins at home and we should love ourselves, so kindness that is for me should begin with me.

Well today I have been wondering if there is a point to all my labouring and visioning (I don’t like that word but am not sure another says it any better) over the past nearly 12 months. The move to find a different way of life that will meet my needs of food, clothing and shelter with some loving care thrown in cos I am human and it begins there. At this point in time I don’t know how I get to earn that money so I have a roof and food and clothes, at least love will be free.  I will explain why knowing that became important and how I find kindness toward myself in there. This is a good thing to explain as it requires me to clarify my thinking too.

It has taken me this long to understand my authentic statement about being who I am and becoming what I want to be when I grow up. It is a topic of conversation that has been hashed over among a number of people in my world this week. Laughingly it is said, “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.” I even said it myself, but I wasn’t being kind to me in saying it. I do know what I want to be, because I am already that grown up version of myself. It could look like I am playing at life but I am living it and living it with some energy. If hard work counted for anything, and courage to confront big and uncomfortable feelings I would have everything I need right now.

The reason I can’t answer the question of: “What do you want to do?” or  “What career move do you have in mind?” is simple. I have done it, and done it by ignoring the biggest and truest part of myself, that perspective of how I interact with the world internally. When I was 17 I chose to be a teacher because I wanted to. After some time the bile of others outside of my immediate family died down, they thought I was wasting my intelligence by only becoming a teacher and I owed ‘it’ to someone to do something more. I studied, taught and then said I am done….but kept going.  Something changed along the way and that something was simply I kept living and life happened to me. I changed, grew, evolved, expanded, had awakenings, transpired beyond my circumstances, got bored, and the list of words go on….everyone has a special one that is exhausting to consider the impact of pursuing it as a life mantra….I simply took down the fence around my garden and let the light in and life happened. I wanted to leave school. No curriculum needed to discover life.

I grew up a long time ago and I have had the mandatory ‘career’ and children and all the rest of the package and I was doing my job because I could; and I was good at it; and it fed and clothed and sheltered us. I stopped needing it almost before I began as a form of my identity or worth in the world. Somehow I was blessed to know I mattered from the day I was born, (some have tried to talk me away from that but love has the effect of valuing and I was loved). There was nothing to stop me from letting loose my inner self…my hippy being as my mother calls it, except me. And so now when I am considering how I eat in a few months time I don’t have an answer other than I have already done that thing, that career and I am simply being myself now.

Being myself now!  This is being kind to myself and allowing that process to continue is the only thing to do. I am an artist. I have an artist’s heart and the desire of a poet to sparkle words and see ideas without the need for explanation. I seek kindness in every part of life. I don’t have to prove it is a worthwhile goal. I don’t have to define it, living it, is the only option.

I smile now as I remember a man five years ago who was reading a book about finding his ‘it’. When you have ‘it’ there is some great thing that is supposed to happen, for him it was in his leadership and vision for the group he was leading. Problem is no one really know what ‘it’ is do they? So much of the striving to be shiny and beautifully turned out;  polished with words and leadership is about marketing to an audience so they will in the end follow you. Why? So you can be ‘it’, that something that says I have changed the world or I am someone. That is the path for many. It is not my path it seems. I don’t perceive I have something others don’t, I am not into us and them thinking. I am no more or less than another…in this life I am who I was always intended to be.

I am living my true life, getting to be within creativity with some intrusion occasionally,  and the likelihood I will find myself on a hill making beauty is high. Eating when I am there is not certain but I am being who I am. That is kindness to me from me. A lovely lady in an employment centre encouraged me to keep going toward me. She understood when I said I have an artist’s heart but have worked out of my head for more than 30 years that this was something huge. She said it with her eyes. She understood, I have nothing to prove only to be. Her advice was simply to live with an open heart and somehow the right next would come.

I know what I want….to be as I am. When I grew up I found I am that I am. Now the question of eating is the next kindness to consider……

Happy Day

Sandy