I often feel that the older I get, the less I “know.” Sometimes life presents mysteries, and challenges that have me wondering if I know bupkis. When I was younger, I felt that I needed to know everything (even when I didn’t), or at least show others that I did. It was an ego thing. As life moved on, people would share kernels of perspective that cracked that façade, notions like, “be wise, not smart,” that helped me open to the difference between wisdom and knowledge/smarts. 

One of the greatest lessons along the way was coming to learn, to see, to understand, that we are in charge of our emotional/spiritual state. That it’s an “inside job.” It can be a painful lesson to learn, especially when there’s so much thrown at us from the moment we are conscious that happiness and fulfillment and our state of being are caused by outside influences. If we look like this or that, if we are successful enough to acquire that car/house/fashion, etc., our life will be better/richer/fulfilled. 

I have nothing against “stuff,” per se. I simply KNOW that this whole cultural sales pitch that (at some point or another) we all seem to buy into is so much at the root of what undermines our well-being. It keeps consumerism and others in charge of how we feel, how we move through life. If someone finds us attractive, we feel better (when nothing has changed in who we are), if we are rejected, we go in the other direction. We apologize for other people’s emotions (“I’m sorry you’re sad…”), instead of owning our own behavior and feelings and, often, discomfort. We look at how others are, how they are behaving or communicating, instead of being responsible for our own responses/behavior/words/actions. It’s often what contributes to the downfall in relationships.