To seek. To search. To understand.
To awe the world from where I stand.
To grace this world with my very presence,
And give myself and life that essence –
The belief that what I do is right,
And the flow of life I shouldn’t fight.
But that my heart is worth the love
That fills it like a hand in glove
So perfect as to hold it tight
And keep it warm in the dead of night
That my soul is worth the tears
That have graced my cheeks for many years
For I am not but who I am....
Does it feel like there should be more???
I started this poem back when I was 16, and the ending has
changed many times. I’ve gone through
rebellious times where I’ve ended it with “And I am not a measly lamb”, and
religious times where, ironically, it’s been “I am just God’s precious
lamb”. Maybe the ending will come some
day, so this is where I left it – unfinished and flawed.
My mother always said growing up that I was special – that I
would do something “big” someday. I felt
it too. I beamed with pride. Not sure what big things were in my future,
but I was confident they would come. I believed in myself.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could just be? Exactly who you are is who everybody –
including yourself – expects you to be.
I realize now that those feelings - of greatness - are normal with your
children. Most parents believe that
their children are special in some way – they’ll excel in some way that will
make you proud to say “that is my son/daughter”. Somewhere along the line, I lost those
feelings for myself. I stopped believing
that I was capable of being remarkable.
Checklists began to form in my head of everything I needed to
be to please everyone. The negatives
were brought to the front and the positives began to fade. The problem was, fulfilling one person’s expectations,
usually negates someone else’s hope. My
path to greatness – which I never gave up on – seemed to be determined by the
path that is set by others. Mountains of
praise from people sat in the shadows of criticism. Some of these were perceived criticisms...
some of them real. Regardless of who it
came from, it all felt the same.
At some point, the pressure mounded, and I realized that the
old cliché was true. You can’t please everyone. I started living for my family and
myself. I started believing in
myself. I became confident that I was
capable of greatness. It’s perhaps not
the magnitude of “big things”, but I will be something... I’ll be me. I do the best that I can, and I try not to
regret that I stumble along the line.
I’ve recently been reminded that it’s a concerted effort to
do this when faced with misfortune. It’s
easy to fall down. It’s hard to get up. You have to remember you are worth it.
The ending – I’ll finish some day. For now it will sit... flawed... but that’s
OK with me.
