Large Quote Block:
5 April 2009
A New Frontier
My life has been a disaster. I have lived in accordance with what I grew up around. I did my best to accommodate who I was with those I was forced to associate with.
Accommodation is where you take who you are and you set it aside in order to be able to relate to those around you. After years and years of doing this, it finally occurred to me that accommodation was blocking me from being who I knew I truly was. You just can't imagine all of the problems it has caused me to live this way.
I think I started doing it because I didn't believe people would really like me for who I really was. I saw the things that other people did that got them some attention and I copied them. I've lived that monkey-see monkey-do life until it nearly choked out who I really am. To free myself, I had to declare a revolutionary war against the way I was living. I had become so entrenched in that accommodating lifestyle that I lost track of where it began and I ended. In the insanity that ensued from trying to determine where this dividing line was, I slipped into a walking depression and then into an addiction that blurred the line even more.
You would think that this depression and addiction were very bad things. But in my case, it was just what I needed to break free. The depression eroded my prideful ego that kept me locked into a lifestyle that I couldn't walk away from without openly admitting that I was a big phoney. Then with my pride out of the way, my addiction ran off all of my friends and family who had built their relationships with me on 100 percent phoney bologna.
I was their yes man. I forfeited all I was in order to be what they needed me to be. I was drained, I was emptied of all the wonder that made my life worth living so nature took its course.
Once all of my accommodating was exorcised out of me, I found that to be myself, I would have to find a way to still relate to these other people. A way that kept my identity free of theirs. To do this, I discovered that I could adapt who I am in order to relate to who they are. In doing it this way, neither one of us will have to sacrifice a part of who we are just to be friends.
Something else that I found beyond the horizon of my addiction was the realization that a new frontier existed in simply rediscovering who I truly am. It's there that there are no pressures to force me into being someone I'm not. The air is clear and my vision of the future is unobstructed. I have the benefit of hindsight to guide me into the enjoyment of who I am. I guess to sum it all up for you, it was after the disaster was over that I crawled out of the wreckage of my life and made friends with the person who lived next door to my heart. That person was who I am today.
The greatest battle I've ever faced involved the discovery of who I really am. Every enemy force was strengthened by my own pride and stupidity they almost defeated me, but just as I was about to give up, I recognized what I was doing to myself. Yes, it took a judge in a Dallas courthouse to point it all out for me, but once I saw it, I began pulling the plug on all of the powers that help me in chains. The battle ended when I shook hands with myself.
Who exactly are you? Are you just a collection of platitudes that you've stolen from those around you? Do you for relationships with others by being yourself or by using the monkey-see monkey-do method? Spend some time searching yourself you might find a whole new you that you never knew existed. Once you've found it, you'll be able to live out your life by excitingly rediscovering a new frontier named you..
Small Quote Block:
Journal entry from an inmate in Texas. "The great tragedy of prison involves the death of everyone around you. My little Jessica no longer exists. Today, she's almost 15 years old and almost as tall as I am."
Journal taken from
http://www.prisonerexpress.org
Kit = Mosaic
