Tag: expectation

  • The beauty of perfection

    The beauty of perfection

    The beauty of perfection escapes the bitter heart.

    Bitterness is the toxin that we hold on to after we experience a betrayal of our trust in another.

    Sometimes that trust is so dear, that we hold on to the poison of its mishandling to protect ourselves from ever being vulnerable to such hurt again.

    Sadly, in doing so, we also deny ourselves the opportunity to experience the beauty that may be the remedy to heal the wound of that unkind betrayal.

    Thus, we anchor ourself in the same past that we wish we could forget, or undo.

    Inevitably, the ones who offer the beauty that we need to breathe fully again are the ones who receive the caustic treatment intended to protect us from such future pain.

    Without realising it, we pay the pain forward, and become part of the cycle that stole our innocence by destroying the innocence of another.

    Break the cycle, beautiful soul. Break the cycle. It will raise your station above the toxic one so that you won’t find yourself looking at the world from their vantage point any longer.

  • Allow healing to begin

    Allow healing to begin

    Don’t wait for someone to speak of your pain before you allow your wounds to heal.

    Your wounds will fester and taint everything around you as you look for reason to feel appreciated for the struggle that you have endured, or may still be enduring.

    You may even convince yourself that your struggle is important enough to be noticed by those important enough to you.

    But, while waiting for them to notice your pain, you suffer.

    You stop noticing what is being tainted by your festering wound.

    And each time you glare at them, looking for evidence of understanding, and only sometimes finding sympathy instead, you look within and notice that sympathy is only ever a dressing to cover the wound, but never to heal it.

    Sympathy only provides a comfortable space in which to nurture the wound, but doesn’t cure it.

    A wound caused by betrayal can only be healed through an accepting embrace.

    An embrace of everything you were before being wounded, and an embrace that loves everything you are capable of being despite your wound.

    An embrace that sees you beyond your wounds, and reconnects you with every innocent belief that you held true, deep within, before that unkind cut gouged your soul.

    There is beauty and peace beyond that wound. But only if you allow its healing to be administered by a heart other than the ones who betrayed you.

  • For the love of peace

    For the love of peace

    The night is only as peaceful as the day’s indulgence, and the day’s indulgence is only as focused as the reflections of the night.

    What we court in quiet moments reflects our beliefs, but what we pursue in our efforts with others reflects our convictions.

    When the two are aligned, sleep becomes a spiritual experience, and love…love becomes a way of life.

    When the two are in conflict, life becomes torturous, and love…love becomes our enemy.


  • Tomorrow is not promised

    Tomorrow is not promised

    Too often we remind others that tomorrow is not guaranteed, yet we live our lives as if we have all the time in the world to make that next big decision, or to do right by others.

    If tomorrow is not guaranteed, neither is your next breath.

    When our thoughts about life remain philosophy, and our reality remains detached, we create a tension within our soul that only we can remedy.

    We live life either looking for what is possible, or we live it by looking for why everything is a struggle.

    Whichever of the two you seek, you will find.

    Mindfulness will offer you the opportunity to take the best of the present, so that the yoke of the past won’t weigh you down with worry for the future.

    You owe it to yourself and to those who look to you for inspiration. But if you’re not living in the present moment, you won’t notice them either.

  • Expecting hope

    Expecting hope

    Expectations are simply hopes with a sense of entitlement.

    The reason for our entitlement to the fulfilment of our hopes are many. Most often, they’re based on what we contributed towards others.

    Sometimes we want that contribution reciprocated because we don’t want to allow others to treat us unfairly, or to take us for granted.

    But sometimes, we hold on to that entitlement because we want the treasures of who we are to be handled with love and gentleness by a specific other.

    Both are based on the hope of what the outcome offers us in happiness and fulfilment. Or even just in achieving a sense of significance.

    Unfortunately, if expectations are not mutually honoured, it becomes a burden for one, and a prison for the other.

    The good news is, both are choices. The burden and the prison. But they weigh us down until we recognise that they’re choices.

    More importantly, until we are willing to let go of the choice to hold on after we’ve exhausted all efforts to achieve its fulfilment, it will continue to feel like a burden or a prison that is imposed, and not one that is chosen.

    Choose wisely…choose consciously.

  • Embrace your greatness

    Embrace your greatness

    There is greatness in all of us.

    Problem is, if we don’t get recognition from others about our greatness, we assume the greatness is not so great, instead of realising that they’re too distracted to notice.

    That’s when we give up on that greatness and instead embrace something trivial that will attract their attention.

    Then, when we get their attention, we assume we’ve achieved something great when in fact we just did something that is momentarily popular.

    And that’s how we fail to change the world.

    We grow old feeling like we were cheated out of greatness, but forget that we traded our greatness for acceptance and validation.

    Be greater than that. You’ve got it in you to do it.

    Photo credit: Naadirah Ismail

  • Who says you’re not enough?

    Who says you’re not enough?

    If you need to remind yourself that you’re enough, you convinced yourself that you weren’t enough.

    No one can do that to you without your agreement or consent.

    Reminders, or affirmations have their place in getting us back on track when we become distracted from the truth of who we are.

    The moment we need to do either beyond a moment in time, it means that we stopped believing what was once a truth, and now need to find reason to convince ourselves that we’re capable of being that way again.

    While there may be truth in that thought process, it also means that we’ve yet to believe that we are what we think we could be, and we therefore convince ourselves that it’s not true in the present moment, but may be true at some future point.

    Again, this way of thinking simply reinforces the belief that we’re not who we want to be.

    The question therefore is, by whose standard are we judging ourselves when we see ourselves as being less than who we think we are?

    If we were judging ourselves by our own standard, our reflections would be an assessment of our growth, rather than a need to convince ourselves that we’re something or someone that we’re not.

  • The forgotten village idiot

    The forgotten village idiot

    This essay has been playing on my mind a lot lately.

    Covid-19 has revealed the true nature of many, which only served to reinforce this notion.

    Who puts a smile on the face of the village idiot?

    The saddest part of this essay is that most who read the title thought it to be humorous.

    From my book The Egosystem, it explores our relationship with those who give selflessly, while being forgotten.

    This pandemic has highlighted the forgotten and the taken-for-granted, and it has diminished further the roles of others who are not deemed essential through need, but who maintain the wellbeing and spirit of others through quiet contribution.

    I’ve always considered what this world would feel like if we didn’t label the purpose or the need that we have of others, and instead we were compelled to choose very deliberately each time what it is that we value about another before we are able to obtain benefit from them.

    Would that be the cure for the pandemic of consumerism? Would it finally rid us of our inclination to see people as a means to an end?

    Or is even that an ideal so far fetched that only the most naive would buy into it?