 |
“There is the mud, and there is the lotus that grows out of the mud. We need the mud in order to make the lotus.”
―Thich Nhat Hanh
What’s your story? When I ask clients, I get an answer
that breaks down into three categories:
The Victim (the tragic story), The Blank Slate (no memory of a story),
or The Pretty Picture (everything in my life was wonderful story).
We all have a story. We must honor our story in order to
move forward in our lives. Danish
philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegard's words, “Life can only be understood
backwards; but it must be lived forwards” are a testament to the power of
honoring our story. To live our
lives forwardly, we must connect the dots from the past to have a clear view of our purpose in life.
How do we look at our history without feeling
trapped by it? Honoring our story
and being trapped by our story are two distinctly different things. Understanding the lessons of our past
and using those lessons to grow is honoring our whole being. Feeling trapped by our story is giving our story too
much power, which keeps us feeling stuck. I grew up in a family where
domestic abuse was present. I
developed an eating disorder in my teens. These are the facts of
my life. I am not defined by
these facts because of the lessons I learned from those events. I learned that domestic abusers can only abuse when
they are given permission, which helped me to take personal responsibility. My eating disorder taught me to find within myself a space to honor and love my
body instead of seeking outside approval, which can never be a substitute for self-acceptance.
How do we live forwardly? Nigerian Novelist Chimamanda Adichie warms of how
impressionable we can be in the face of a story in her popular TED Talk. She tells of how she was perceived as a
woman worthy of pity and representational of the whole of the continent of Africa by
some of her American college professors. She
speaks of her own way of defining her Nigerian “house boy” who,
unlike her family, was from an underprivileged home. She only saw him as being poor. My freshman English students view this TED Talk. I not only ask them how they are singularly
viewed as community college students, I ask them how they view each other and
themselves. Being aware of how we
form our identities is the first step. Once we are aware, we can choose to
reject or incorporate outside perceptions.
To Thine Own Self Be True - Finding the Lotus Most of us knew who we were as dreaming children. We knew we were talented, capable, kind, whole, powerful,
and were ready to make our unique contribution to the world. Finding our true self by getting back to our dreaming child comes with
awareness, courage, and a realization that our stories are simply the fertile mud to help us to grow into the divine beings we were meant to be.
