[Tension & Renewal - XVI]
Most of us have spent our life trying to live up to impossible standards. Don’t get caught up on the “impossible” part, as if I’m referring to expectations that are too high, like straight A’s in HS or getting accepted into Harvard Law School.
All standards are impossible at some level if they are externally derived. By trying to fulfill the expectations of others we become adept at seeing ourselves as we imagine others see us. In so doing we’ve effectively alienated ourselves from our own inner reality.
Eventually—usually by early adulthood—we've created a few personas to please the expectations of those we seek the most approval from. And we go on living out of these personas until we wake up somewhere in our 40’s or 50’s and we’re miserable. At that point we start looking for causes of our misery. It could be any number of things: an unfulfilling job, impassionate relationship, or middle class lifestyle. (The thing we blame could be anything.)
But those things aren’t the cause. At least not fundamentally.
Below the whole list of reasons for your misery is that you’ve been alienated from yourself since you were six years old. You’ve been fulfilling everyone else’s expectations and standards for you; the whole while your soul ignored.
Renewal—deep spiritual awakening!—looks like addressing your alienation, and rediscovering who you really are.
(Coming up with all new standards is just transferring the symptom and continuing the alienation. Your renewal will most likely look like unconditional grace that you offer yourself when you look in the mirror. And being patient. And crying. And that’s okay.)
