What If I Gave Up The Struggle...?
I spent so much of my life living from this place of hard.
Everything was hard, even when it wasn’t.
See, I thought I needed a story, a problem…a bit of drama even. Perhaps, for some reason, I thought that would be the thing that made me interesting.
Little did I know, until recently, that I am bloody interesting all on my own!
(And, I’m not even a Brit!)
So that said, this string of words came free-flowing from my beingness recently.
And, I felt called to share them with you as they just may resonate as you walk this path called life.
💜
What if I gave up the struggle?
Would the world end?
Sometimes it feels so.
But that’s silly...right?
Are we really here to struggle?
Are we really taught to believe that life is hard?
Are we conditioned from birth to worry, fear, stress...complicate life?
Or is it a choice…?
That was my issue
if I had to pick only one.
I, Jill R. Stevens, complicated
e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g.
[Important clarity here...in the past!]
And it was bloody exhausting.
And no, I’m not a Brit, but for some reason, it seems better to write the word “bloody” than to type out “it’s f—king exhausting”.
But it is — bloody, f—king exhausting.
To worry about what others think if I drop the F-bomb.
To think about what I want to be when I grow up, at 45+/- years of age. I mean, seriously.
To be another clique in the world of mid-life-crisis.
But here’s what I recently realized.
I’m not alone in this way of thinking.
I’m not unique or special in my thoughts.
It seems to be a common thread that connects us.
This disconnect, this people-pleasing, this joyless existence because we feel we’re supposed to live that way.
By another’s standards, for another, doing what we should because… well, it’s what we know, what we’ve been taught, what we’ve seen.
When did we stop being true?
Stop being real.
Start giving more f—ks about what others think
Than what is
Our truth.
Because the cost of this self-perpetuated struggle is endless
It’s worry
It’s fear
It’s sleepless nights
It’s dis-ease
Which leads to disease in the body.
It’s broken relationships
Judgy behavior
Lost moments
Holding in the words
Replaying over
and over
and bloody over again
what we
Shoulda
Coulda
Woulda
Said
had we only had a second to think,
to be…
Hmm, to be.
Now that’s the drug of choice
But I jump ahead
Into a calm sea of delicious peace
That I, frankly, never want to stop bathing in.
A place so radiant
So fulfilling
So universally true
That nothing can penetrate the
Crystalline walls
Of me.
It’s a space of utter and complete power
A way of being
That means stopping the madness
The spin
The keeping up
With what exactly?
The search for more.
For better
Is done.
And all that is left is a
Path within
A journey
To the core
Of beingness.
It’s like a big-O
the secret sauce.
The cosmic oneness
has been so waiting
for us to claim
To get
To experience
To hold in the palm of our…
Essence.
But to get it
To swim in that delirious sea
Is to give it all up.
The stories
The judgments
The fears
The doubts
The worry
The thoughts
That hold you hostage in the night
And the light of the brightest day.
What if you could give it all up?
The struggle?
What if we were taught differently and programmed to believe 100% possible, 100% of the time?
But there you have it - another faulty scenario where blame is placed at the foot of our teachers, our parents and our environment that indoctrinates us from day one.
I remember being a child watching Oprah Winfrey and all the sob-stories of childhood, of life -- and I mean no disrespect. But literally, that’s what I experienced, this sharing and bearing of one’s soul - to millions - with tears and tissues…
And my perspective, stories don’t just tell, they sell.
They sell us on what we believe, what we choose to feel and what we understand to be true.
But what is truth?
What is even real?
What if all of it, all of this, all of everything, is simply that -- a story?
...And looking back, as I absorbed those moments with my then young eyes,
wasn’t there a lack of personal responsibility?
That was my interpretation and thus became a way of being I emulated.
Ah, influence.
A perpetuating of the story by constantly reliving the depths of despair, the highs and the lows, the horrors, the drama, the pain of it all.
Or the intense pleasure of it.
And the sudden absence
Of that heady feeling
And the search for more
Like the most addicting of drugs.
Love
With strings.
Or that which we think is love…
Cue heartache
Heartbreak
The perfect rainy-day Lifetime movie.
The epic you complete me moment
The sinking of our ship,
the rising of frigid waters,
The loss of what could have been
—Jack.
Instead of seeing every single experience in life,
as life.
As for my betterment,
period.
As the journey,
neither good nor bad,
simply is.
To now,
suddenly,
not giving meaning to things
is so freeing.
To be vulnerable and open yet not to place value or the validation of me on the shoulders of another’s reaction, thought, judgment…
That’s true peace.
And for me the story, the journey was one of…
Finding my perfectly imperfect self…
More on that for another day...
