Illusions of Self

This past year has taught me a lot about the stories we create about one another and perhaps even more about the stories we create about ourselves.

At first, I felt a strong need to tell my side of things. To explain myself, correct misunderstandings and perhaps change the way some people saw me.

But I didn't.

And with time, I began to realise there probably wasn't much point.

We all experience one another through the lens of our own lives. People form an image of us through their experiences, just as we form images of them through ours. Neither necessarily holds the whole person.

It made me think about all the versions of ourselves we learn to identify with throughout our lives.

The good girl.
The smart girl.
The pretty girl.

And then perhaps, one day, the difficult girl. The selfish one. The bad one.

They're all labels.

And it's exhausting trying to prove that you are one while convincing people that you're not another.

But perhaps the hardest expectations and judgments aren't even the ones other people place upon us. They're the ones we place upon ourselves.

We create an image of the person we think we should be and then judge and punish ourselves when we don't measure up. Perhaps that is the hardest image of all to let go of.

We see our imperfections as things that need to be fixed, hidden or overcome.

But what if the imperfection is perfect?

Not perfect in the sense that everything we do is right, but perfect in the sense that being human was never supposed to mean being without contradiction, mistakes, vulnerability or messiness.

What if we could go deeply within ourselves and simply see what is there the beautiful, the messy, the contradictions, the mistakes without immediately judging any of it?

Acceptance isn't the same as excusing everything.

We can see something within ourselves that we don't particularly like without immediately deciding that its existence makes us bad. Perhaps genuine accountability actually becomes easier when we're no longer defending ourselves against our own judgement.

I can look honestly at myself, acknowledge the things I could have done differently, learn from them and still accept the human being who did them.

Judgement keeps us bound.
Acceptance releases us.

For much of my life, I tried to become the person I thought I needed to be for the people around me. And somewhere in all that trying, I moved further and further away from myself, abandoning my own truth.

I had spent so long looking outside myself for acceptance, believing that if I could just be enough, good enough, kind enough, whatever enough then perhaps I would finally feel accepted.

But something changed when I began to accept myself instead.

When I stopped rejecting and judging parts of myself, the world softened too. It began to reflect back to me the love and understanding I had finally learned to offer myself.

The acceptance I had been searching for outside of myself had been waiting for me within.

I don't need to become a better version of the person I thought I was supposed to be.

I can simply become more honest about who I already am.

And that also means allowing other people their own experience of me.

I don't need to convince anyone that I'm a good person. If I am the difficult one, the selfish one or even the bad one in someone else's story, I can let that be their story without making it my identity.

The people who are right for me won't need me to perform a version of myself in order to belong in their lives. And I don't want them to have to perform one for me either.

That is what acceptance really looks like allowing other people to be who they are, allowing myself to be who I am, and accepting that we won't always belong in each other's lives.

Agnes x