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Health & Fitness

Are You Talkin' The Talk? Or Walkin' Your Walk?

“Be who you are, and say what you feel -- because the ones that mind don’t matter, and the ones that matter don’t mind.” ~ Dr. Seuss.

I have used the above quotation in many of my Facebook statuses, and I have used it as a teaching tool for my daughter, since her days in elementary school. It has been one of the major focuses in my life, and it has helped me through many difficult times. I’ve tried to educate my daughter in the same vein; being yourself is one of the greatest joys, as well as one of the reasons why we are here on this planet. You cannot be anything other than yourself, otherwise you will suffer greatly.

I found this adage out during a recent meditation, and it gave me reason to give pause; I realized that I wasn’t truly living the phrase, I was only speaking it. Which means, I was talking the talk, but I wasn’t actually walking the walk.

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Big mistake.

I had always wondered why I suffered from a great deal of anxiety throughout my life. I never really examined the anxiety for what it was, and so I ran to physicians to give me something to calm myself, because I couldn‘t understand why I felt the way that I did. This was something that I had done throughout my life, and I wanted to finally figure out why I needed so much medication in order to keep myself at an even keel.

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I realized that I wasn’t being honest with myself at all. I sat with this for a while, and I realized that I had been running away from who I truly was, in order to keep family, friends and other key players in my life happy. But I realized, as well, that I wasn’t really happy. I understood, finally, something that my father had been trying to tell me, before he passed away.

I remember the day well; we were in his business office, discussing Life and things that we felt. I had a relationship with my father that was based on honesty, and I really never tried to keep things from him. We began to talk about being ourselves around people, and my father had offered these words of wisdom to me: “Patty, it took me 47 years to discover who I was, and what I felt. I spent many years, trying to make my parents happy, and it made me miserable. My greatest hope is that you don’t wait as long as I did to figure out who you are, and what makes you tick. I don’t want to see you waste your life like I did mine.”

I didn’t understand what he was trying to tell me, because I wasn’t ready to hear his words. I thought, in my twenty-something year old mind, that he wanted me to follow in his footsteps, to take over his business, to be independently wealthy, and to carry on his legacy. Here I was, studying to be a nurse, and I didn’t think that I wanted to take over a building and a business that truly didn’t interest me. I thought that studying nursing WAS being myself, and so I remember smiling at him and saying words that I really didn’t mean: “Don’t worry, Daddy, I won’t.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

After he passed away, I pondered on his words, and still couldn’t figure them out. Truly, I hadn’t enough experience with Life to really grasp the words he had left me with, and I tried to put my own spin on it. Maybe he wanted me to do what I dreamed? I had always wondered if he truly thought that I was going to make a wonderful nurse, although he was the only one, when I was pinned by my most difficult professor, who gave me a standing ovation. I had been so proud at that moment, not only because I had endured college and succeeded at getting through such a difficult curriculum, but that my dad had validated me with a round of applause that was deafening.

I spent my life, living it for others, and never truly feeling fulfilled. Giving of myself on a daily basis had spent me, and there were some days that I felt gratified, but I always felt like something was truly missing. I always had an underlying sense of anxiety, because somehow, I always sensed that, as Madeline’s Miss Clavel always said, “Somezing is not quite right.”

And so, after countless years of therapy (I’m not ashamed to admit it) and several medications for anxiety later, I have finally realized that I wasn’t being true to myself. I was knuckling under to other peoples’ expectations of who I was supposed to be, and I could see the mask, slowly slipping from my face. I wondered if people were going to really and truly like me for who I was, and I was afraid of feeling abandoned because of it.

And suddenly, in meditation, I realized that I didn’t care. I realized that I was created to be exactly who I was, instead of what others wanted me to be. I realized that this was the factor that was causing me such grief, and when I finally grasped this concept, Dr. Seuss’s words, as well as my dad’s, came rushing to the surface, and I finally understood what my dad was trying to tell me. He wanted me to just be Patty, instead of what everyone else thought I should be. He wanted me to explore what made me truly happy, and he wanted me to go out and get it. And he wanted me to just say, “Leave me alone, this is who I am - if you don’t like that, so sorry, but deal with it.”

Isn’t it amazing that it only took me 51 years to “get it”?

Life, to me, is about slowly coming to awareness. We sometimes understand the lessons that we were given to learn, and sometimes we aren’t ready to hear them, and so we “fall back to sleep” to them. We are always given lessons, each one building on the previous one, and it’s up to us to do the work required to actually learn. I realized that, throughout my life, I had these epiphanies about being true to myself, but each time I understood the message, I would attempt to be myself, and out of fear, would revert back to the expectation of myself. I would put myself back to sleep, for fear of rejection from society and from the ones I loved. And grow frustrated with myself for denying myself.

This time, however, I have decided that if people cannot accept me for who I am, warts and all, it’s just going to have to be their loss. I know who the people are, who accept me for who I am, and not for who I’ve tried to be. They’re actually the ones to whom this blog is dedicated today. And for those who have not seen the beauty in themselves yet, I hope that one day you will understand, because I’ve seen others fall into this trap of people pleasing and getting nowhere, and it has always caused me a great deal of frustration. I finally understand why; I was frustrated with myself for doing the very same thing, but I wasn’t willing to look at the facts.

Rather than beat myself up about all the lost time, I’m going to just go with it and be grateful that I finally “woke up” to the truth. It doesn’t matter when you learn the lesson, as long as you learn it. And the day that you say that you have “learned”, Life clunks you on the head and says, “Silly -- you are ALWAYS learning, and you never STOP!”

It’s been said that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. It’s also been said that, rather than run from whatever emotion one is struggling with, one should sit with it and allow it to be, in order to fully understand what the feeling is attempting to teach. I felt the anxiety rather strongly yesterday, and rather than try to shop it away, or eat junk food in order to stuff it down, I just sat with it and let it be there. I’m so very glad that I did, because it taught me a great deal about what I’d been hiding from myself the whole time - I was hiding myself from myself.

The message behind today’s blog is simple. If you’re presently in a situation where you aren’t being true to yourself, take a simple tally of what the cost is to you. Ask yourself if it’s worth it to hide yourself away, and ask yourself why you feel the need to do such a thing to the wonderful being that is you. God didn’t create you to be something that you aren’t. He created you to be the perfect YOU that you already are. To be something other than that is to deny the beauty that you offer to Life and to the world.

I’m sitting here with my big cup of water now, and I’m reveling in the beauty of who I am. I have never felt such peace, nor have I ever felt this calm. The joy that I feel for myself and all of the components of me, has filled me with acceptance. I truly think that this is the aspect of Life that we must grasp and understand, in order to truly have a life worth living. We must accept ourselves, for in doing so, we are freer to accept others for who they are. If we could all just do our part, when we are ready, I wonder how many more epiphanies would occur, and just how many more miracles we would experience on a daily basis. We are wonderful, just as we are. I finally know that I am - are you ready to walk your walk?

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