The thing about making a better past is that it is really hard to accomplish with your hands full.

When your house is on fire the primary suggestion is to Get the F*ck out !

Rarely is it suggested that one take the time to grab your little flower box of sex toys or take a moment to check if you have your favorite Fedora.

So why is it that I choose to hang on to past moments, as I move toward the promise of a different view, with the emotional structure I built in the past?

The thinking that brought me to today is part of the past I hope to evolve. And a lot like a physical structure, I have the option to just renovate instead of totally demolish.

One problem is that when you give me a sledgehammer it feels kinda good smashing the dusty rose tiles that now seem outdated and that may lead to the conclusion an Italian contractor I worked with was fond of saying … ” Da whola ting ees godda comma down”.

I was suspect of his motivations and certainly of the cost but in a way is that not the opportunity we have every day?

As difficult as it may seem to be every day I have the opportunity to look at my yesterday from a whole new view … if I so choose.

But that process is limited to the degree to which I attach myself to yesterday’s.

If I stay stuck I am missing life’s panoramic vista.

That’s like an architect rooting himself in one limited view … the facade may look good but the overview of the project will look like a Hollywood back lot or ( or more precisely) an “L.A. starlets front lot“- great from the front but not much depth behind the backdrop.

“ Do one thing every day that scares you”

For me that starts every day with the challenge of recognizing that yesterday’s view is gone… that my life experience is one day further deepened.

I can leverage those two facts to truly experience a new view today or I can trap myself in the illusion that the limitations of yesterday’s perspective are all I can hope for.

The challenge for me is architectural.

Like all renovations, it starts with deciding what to hang onto and what to release, all the while I have to consider the limitations of my ability to get the work done as I juggle with the only two hands I have.

Not to mention while seeking the most seamless way to do the “finishing“, right down to the baseboards, between what was and what I envision the future structure could be.

Everyone who has lived through a massive renovation knows it’s the ‘finishing’ that takes the most time. Yet the only way it’s accomplished is by focusing on the smallest details.

And while that requires continually backing up and looking at how the past sides against the present, one truth remains inévitable:

It will look different.

And good thing! ‘Cause sitting outside a burning house may be warm for a little bit but it won’t leave you enlightened for long .

People do things to others that hurt.

Mistakes, misguided conclusions, disregard for the feelings of others, thoughtlessness and sometimes willful expressions of darkness.

These things just role through our lives and we have no power to avoid them.

There you are a happy little Shad fly moving through the air one minute and the next you’re splattered across the windshield of someone else’s Mac truck.

Woefully careening down the highway out of the drivers seat. Completely impacted by someone else’s journey. You want to just fly off but it’s too late for that … you’re splattered.

You have no control over the feelings and the experience.

Or so it seems.

For days …months … sometimes years that word unspoken festers inside.

The mention of the name of the offender calls forth emotions that turn the most otherwise calm individual into a ranting, seething warrior.

I know someone who has harbored such pain for literally decades.

She refuses to view forgiveness as anything other than the power she wields over the transgressions she feels were committed against her.

I’ve heard the story, countless times… admittedly some of the things that were said were hurtful.

But that was a generation ago.

Life has continued to flow, children have been born and raised and even death has visited her family.

So why then does she refuse to release the past after suffering the weight of resentment for so long?

I think we do this because we think we learn so early that forgiveness is the final power we hold over a people who hurt us.

” I will forgive you if you crawl/buy me something/go harm someone else”

We feel powerless when we get splattered! Our response from some sort of shortsighted perspective is to imagine that by withholding forgiveness we hold the power to never be hurt by that person again.

And this requires work.

Almost invariably the offender starts cow towing to the victim, birthing a toxic relationship with a short life expectancy.

it’s short because not many of us will choose to endure the shitty feelings of being judged on past “learning opportunities” for an indeterminate time.

And so the offender exits the highway and the victim is left with nothing but the one side of the story, which permanently traps her in the pain of the moment that happened long ago at the moment of the perceived transgression.

I’ve literally heard people say... I will hate that guy til they bury me.

in so doing the victim mindlessly squanders every tomorrow canvas they have to paint, with the splatter of some putrid color they really are not fond of.

Why?

Because to forgive would force me feel the vulnerability to reoccurrence of pain by surrendering the power.

News flash … The ONLY Power I have over the past is the power to choose to not let it burden me today so that I might bring my full self and ergo make tomorrow’s past better.

This also takes work !

Sometimes the lust for power seduces me in dim lights with sexy underwear.

It breathlessly whispers to me: “they don’t deserve my forgiveness. ” it moans “If I let them off the hook they will just do it again”

While both of these ponts may be true, it is the victim who ultimately carries the toxins of anger while the offender hardly feels the ankle bracelet he has been condemned to by the victim.

Forgiveness can only work it’s magic when BOTH the person seeking forgiveness and the forgiver want to feel better.

The problem is that in some deep dark recessed place in my mind …I kinda like sexy underwear… I forget that power over others is not my prerogative and that I am actually taxed by the weight of harboring resentment.

And so by not forgiving I join the team of people that do things that hurt… ME!

Only thing is that in this process I also hurt other people … like the ones closest to me.

I do so by hanging on to past transgressions so they do not see my fullest light, since some of it remains hidden behind the weight of yesterday’s mistakes.

I deny those I am closest to the manifestation of my best self.

Making tomorrow’s past less than it can be.

Sometimes I feel I need to decide to never expose myself again to that person.

But as I walk away I have to remember – do I want to start my journey today with the added weight of yesterday’s pain?

Or do I want to take the energy I would invest in that goose chase and direct it to lightening my load by learning how to forgive those who hurt me?

Making tomorrow’s past better.

The movement toward “making a better past” came not in a minuscule way.

It came with a cataclysmic crash the day we buried my father.

Because that day I found myself with no other option but to accept he was gone.

I loved him so deeply, for so long that I had really kinda created a denial based defense mechanism..

Incapable of conceptualizing my life without him, I never really consciously accepted that one day he would not be anywhere I could see him.

Then in a flash I was left with only the hole I felt in the place where I once thought my heart was.

The pain and sense of loss that day literally drove me to my knees beside the hole into which they were lowered him .

And Bam! I was lowered to one of the darkest moments I have experienced.

There was very little light defining me when I finally got home that night.

I said things to one of the most important people in my sphere left on the planet that night.

Hurtful, ugly, painful things that could only have been said from a place where I was consumed by fear.

Fear of how would I be in his absence.

The light that defines me flickered very dimly that night and I said things that changed my world .

It is a past I want so much to make better.

News flash… No can make a better past!

I’ve had a few years now to figure out how I might have approached it differently.

The first thing I do now is to accept.

Acceptance is the very first step to a better past.

Acceptance of what is allows me to avoid taking an active role in making life messier.

The only place from where a better solution might be discovered is a place that is not rooted in denial.

Denial is only a prolongation of the suffering, since I can’t move on from what I don’t recognize.

If I steadfastly deny the inevitable I may delude myself into moments of temporary distraction but in the end the inevitable is exactly that …inevitable.

In 19 days my eldest daughter is leaving home and moving to the west.

And this time the hole will not consume me.

As this time I will approach the same fear from a different view.

Instead of denying the pain until reality slams over me, this time I am choosing to take it on the chin in daily sparring matches with acceptance.

Only instead of one giant Muhammad Ali right hook I am leaning into small jabs to the chest.

Mindfully allowing myself to feel just a tablespoon of sadness now, has allowed me to right size the the inevitable.

I will miss her more than I can say.

That is just a fact.

She has been one of my anchors in the last couple years and we have had some deeply rewarding conversations as she emerges presenting the beautiful spirit she is to the world.

Yet, I must accept that her life is calling now and while I might want to deny the day will arrive, I really don’t want a repeat of the last time I tries that!

So every day I take a small dose of acceptance in whatever form it comes…bitter pill of fear and sadness or joy in the recognition of the woman she has become.

Both touch the familiar fear of …

“what will I be in her absence”

This practice of allowing bite size chunks of the fear has served me well…so far.

Acceptance allows me to feel and digest small portions of emotion every day. Like filling some small bags of sand on the banks of the river of my life, in order to prevent a tsunami from washing away my heart again.

It has not been pain-free, but it has lead me to believe that I will not be ill prepared and caught off guard nor will there be a second cataclysmic clash.

Choosing to take small bites of what scares me, leaves me feeling like I have the power of choice.

And choosing to surrender is the last/best gesture of power I will ever make!

So every day I let a little out, lean a little in and prepare to make tomorrow’s past better.

Back in the day, my mother who hails from the Deep South used the expression “that’s not at all becoming” in reference to attire or behavior that she felt detracted from the standard of appropriate she had established in her world.

It’s a quirky use of the word, in that when placed in first person context it really doesn’t make sense. Who can one be becoming ? Is is a verb or a noun?

She had a number of those colloquialisms that often gave me irritated pause yet also inspired my fascination of words.

To become, seems to me, the most accurate description of a life worth living .

Like the start of every day when we lay there, eyes first peeling and we wake to a blank slate of choices.

Starting with: Will I get up or snooze? Will I exercise or rush to the office? Will I build myself further today or will my past define me? Will I wear pants ?

In these choices I become something that heretofore didn’t exist – an ever so slightly different edition of me .

Albert Einstein is widely credited with saying,

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

Yet many of us thrive and flourish on routine.

Prompt adherence to predictability has a soothing and calming effect on one’s being.

However, when the fear of risk and pain fuels the desire for calming and soothing sensations, replacing the will to evolve and grow despite the potential risk, then I run the risk of proving Einstein’s hypothesis.

The reason it is insanity to repeat the same behavior (dare I say whether it be socially approved or not) is that it attempts to control the limitless opportunities to feel all that life offers.

And Is life not defined by feelings ?

Not sure ?

Walk to a graveside snd ask “how do you feel now?

In the absence of a voice from the other side, all we are left with is the balanced equation of our existence through our thoughts and feelings.

And actually ” thoughts” are a poor second influencer, between those two, simply based on the chaotic neighborhood of my mind, from where they emerge.

Thoughts are all to often from the wrong side of the tracks.

By conspicuously limiting myself to one view is like having only one dessert …ever …or quitting something that’s harming us, eventually we pine for something to stimulate ourselves alternately.

And that’s where we give up mindful choices and start “mindless reaction”.

Like eating our one dessert choice with ketchup in a Moo Moo. Or more typically quitting the diet gorging ourselves and gaining twenty pounds.

Further evidence of the insanity of boredom coupled with the power of choice, can be witnessed daily in the lives of the Uber rich or celebrities.

The absolute debauchery people with money and power seem capable of often can’t be even fantasied by those of us with less fame and fortune.

Why is that ?

Could it be because they stopped becoming?

They have arrived !

When we have all that we imagined we need to isolate us from our fears of insignificance and make us different/ above/ better than –what next ?

Clearly, therein lies the measure of success, for it’s not about who we became to position us where we are, as that is past tense.

No, it would seem that it is far more about the choices me make and the conclusions we accept about where we are today.

Uber rich/ broke … old/young … afraid/at peace whatever the state I am viewing myself from when my eyes first peel will initiate the orientation of my actions- for the only day I ever have – today.

Ultimately … (and here is the big reveal on my choice of website names)- the only way I can have a hope of making a better past is by consciously making different choices today.

By building a present I can be more authentically comfortable with, I have a hope of being in the future and looking upon a past with the eyes of contentment.

I’ve been blessed in life to have had far more than my share of material things and also extended periods where I didn’t know how I was going to provide for those I love.

I have lived nights in the opulent hotels of Europe and mornings where the ceiling has literally fallen in above my head in my home.

Yet neither position, in the moment, provided me with the same growth and learning that the juxtaposition of the two experiences in one life, have taught me.

It’s particularly challenging to lose things and people we assumed defined us.

However, when we do and choose to get up and dust off, we open ourselves to the boundless options and feelings available to us in life.

We learn first hand that who we thought we were is nothing in the pale light of who we are becoming.

When I was a kid I remember defending myself for some transgression before my dad and saying;

“Can you tell me what’s on the wall behind you without looking?”

To which he replied;

“No I don’t have eyes in the back of my head”

Without skipping a beat I quipped;

“Me neither-so we can agree that the view from my seat is different than yours”

He smiled.

point taken…

I still got grounded though.

The experience however, was not in vain.

Inspiring since that time a fascination with the intensity with which we each will defend our own perspectives.

And  further, how the degree to which we defend the perspective has an inverse effect on the accuracy of it’s reflection of reality.

The most succinct way to summarize my observations would be as follows;

The more attached we become to our perspective, the more narrowed our view and experience of life becomes.

Speaking of view … I have often marveled at the accuracy of our vision.

The eyes seem to be able to funnel in all of our panorama, most often without limitation.

So how is it conceivable that at any point in time we become limited to only one narrow view. And while we are on it, how is it possible that music can be almost universally appealing and simultaneously aggressively divisive?

“I will listen to anything BUT rap/country/ opera/ metal/bladideeda “

How is it possible to drive past a forest of trees, leaves each riddled with imperfection- on the cusp of death and yet the driver only sees the brilliance of autumnal splendor?

Or look at our sons first ever written alphabet and comment ” Almost perfect! … You just neglected to dot your j !”

Clearly it’s far less about the observed and far more about observer. But how to distinguish “who” within us is actually observing is often a very messy, convoluted and confusing process.

The difference between the “Autumnal” and “Alphabet” perspectives (described above) is the place from where the observations that inspired the emotional response, were interpreted.

Agreed, it is the eyes most basic job to bring information inward for us to first ascertain any threat to survival, to inspire reaction (fight/flight).

Yet to “react” we need emotion.

Emotion clearly is felt in the heart but unfortunately all too often falsely fictionalized in the mind.

And therein lies the distinction, when the mind is thinking through the data interpreted from the eyes, ears et al and cross relating it within the extensive database of past experiences and future threats, it can over season the experience.

And any reactions overly influenced by mind’s perspective, run the risk being less representative of the heart’s true intention.

But the best news is ..

Conversely, if the heart is simply open to a drive on a fall afternoon, the experience of the ever present natural beauty, overshadows the actual reality of the individual leaf’s life cycle.

The only constant is change !

Embrace change!

Change! Evolve! Grow!! For this is to live!

These quotes circle us daily, appearing throughout our culture. I’m guessing they are so popular because more than anything else we are commonly bound by our struggle with shifts in the status quo.

I’m guessing that’s because the amygdala (the part of our brain where self preservation questions are acted upon) was designed for simple questions and simple times like:

“Gronk do I run from this T Rex or will it let me ride it” ?

that way of thinking was soooo 10,000 BC!

Now as continually evolving technologies and a rapidly shrinking planet have us in close proximity of all kinds of unknown, our poor little amygdalas are in need of an ‘all inclusive’ somewhere.

Then there the moments of exceptional change: death of loved one, end of a marriage, a new home, a new job, change in health.

These times in life tend to have us pining for change less overwhelming. Seeking more routine.

It’s at these powerful moments of change in our lives that we are most susceptible to forgetfulness, irritability and further, substance abuse, verbal/physical anger and suicide .

It’s as if we have an amount of different shit we can process and then we hit that predetermined amount of change we can take no more and we just want to escape.

Leaving me to wonder if it was this state that inspired the famous author of the unchanging high school required reading to say;

“Certain things, should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone, “

– J.D. Salinger, 

While these may be the musings from a different era, back then things were done the same way across generations because part of parenting was to pass on life hacks to the next to the next wave- (now we have Facebook, day care and reality TV to take care of that)

The Internet changed the pace for us all, the result is exponential growth in awareness, and opportunity. Nothing is impossible and everything is changing faster than (at times) our ability to keep processing it all.

However the downside of the power of the internet is the pace it demands and the expectation of immediacy.

Change and lots of it – is actually the new ‘routine’.

The response to overwhelming change can often be disconnection. For example the reaction of a friend of mine who is going through separation from a long marriage, the twenty somethings leaving the nest, moving to a new home and a diagnosis of cancer was;

“I feel like I’m numb, things that I loved and engaged in bring me less- if any- joy.

I feel powerless, all my milestones have been smashed and I don’t really know which way is true north …so why bother?”

No shit ?!! That’s a Tsunami of change.

It seems that, like a lot of life’s lessons, the secret response to overwhelming change, is wrapped in a paradox,

It is at moments like the Tsunami noted above, that we feel most powerless. Yet it is precisely at the moment we acknowledge powerlessness, that we can shift to become aware of our ultimate (and only real) position of power to play from.

The ultimate gesture of power is surrender.

In that we actually have the choice to accept and surrender, and who isn’t aware that “choice is the privilege of power”.

And surrender centers around the acceptance of what is ‘now’ even when we might feel a wee bit frightened and overwhelmed “by the now” .

It is during the painful resistance to change that we are victims to the greatest fears. Those, as yet, unmanifested outcomes that we have concocted in the vacuum of uncertainty that proceeds our acceptance and commitment to change.

Surrender, however, is not for the faint of heart or the undisciplined. It rolls onto the scene at the crescendo of our resistance. Invariably at the moment when we think “I just can’t do this … I give up.”

When surrender and acceptance appear to us there is a palpable release from active resistance. It can be felt like the change in the air that occurs after lightening finally cracks the sky on a hot, humid summer afternoon.

And yet there is still one more shift to happen if we are to fully “embrace change .

The shift that happens when we acknowledge the outcome is not ours to control is the most revealing and transcendant.

This seems true because it is at that instant we realize exactly how vulnerable we find ourselves when the masquerade of indignant resistance has been removed.

Brilliantly put another way:

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation creativity and change”

“no one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side ..

Or you don’t”

-Stephen King,

Some people never develop a taste for Lima beans.

I’m always reminded of that when I choose them for my plate. Oddly at the precise moment that revelation appears I am also reminded of gagging when they appeared on my plate as a young boy.

Like so many paradoxical lessons life offers we often don’t realize how something enriches our life experience until we manage to deal with initial unpleasantness of an unexpected experience.

So much of what we define as a “happy fulfilling life” is too often predicated on the world remaining “with all our ducks in a row”

Everyone behaving the way we imagined from the comfort of under the covers this morning, and everything tasting just as we like.

” Life’s short might as well have it your way!” I am incessantly told .

Really…. doesn’t that imply that if it’s going “my way” life is as it should be??

“Cool !! I knew it .. that’s exactly what I’ve been telling you all for all these years”

It’s easy to recognize in the context illustrated above how ridiculous it is to expect a day without disturbance, but if we all know this then why are we so fucked up when Lima beans appear on our plate?

Why is it someone driving, in a way that we don’t feel coincides with our interpretation of the right way to operate a motor car, why is it when this happens that many of us lose our shit and drive 20 miles out of our way, trying desperately both verbally and with all the sign language we can remember, to let him know he should consider surrendering his licence?

The best reason I can come up with is “why am I not that happy” is a trick question !

The more egocentric we as a population become, (thanks Andy Warhol for the 15 mins of comment), the more we assume that things are supposed to go the way we deem correct.

Despite what we are perpetually misguided to believe, I suggest not one of us are not born with an entitlement to life without heartbreak, challenge and failure.

Try sharing the notion that failure is not progress with a toddler learning to walk: try scolding the youngster for falling. See how quickly he gets back up and tries again.

Or imagine those who never fully love for fear of the pain of heartbreak. Lima beans may make you gag but a life with an empty heart will kill you.

However also we are often reminded: “The heart is not filled from the outside” and this is paradox that I referred to earlier.

For It is exclusively in the stories behind my scuffed knees, broken hearts and embarrassing failures that I was inspired to press on and in so doing,that my spirit was fully freed to learn and grow. Only with complete acceptance of the “Shit Fairy’s” role as part of my life was I even capable of imagining being fully open to experiencing all of my life!

We we designed to evolve and the greatest growth comes with repeated, often challenging exercises to reveal to the world all that we have to offer.

And can’t this can only be revealed when we (within the intimacy of self awareness) stand in front of a challenge and rise to face it ?

It is only when I have resisted the natural temptation to shield myself from the pain of accepting “life on life’s terms” that my truest self surfaced with abilities and subsequently the confidence to get through even a large mound of Lima beans when they show up.

Now pass the Brussels sprouts please .

I was talking to someone who was sharing with me the fear of selling the home. Everything was changing… the kids… the needs…the neighborhood…

“Hell!!  Life itself was changing! What will I become? … We built that place!…We raised our children there…Will they feel lost/disenfranchised? or worse will they drift the planet joining a nomadic pursuit of something permanent? Is it not my role to give them a home base to return to as adults? And what about the grandchildren?”

As the conversation continued the emotion grew more evident. Soon the tone of voice could no longer mask the disillusionment and sadness.

Then out of nowhere the conversation shifted  when my friend said;

” ….and l just finally found a first class handy man… you think I will ever be able to find someone to help me renovate there ?! uh no!!”

I say something shifted because I saw it.

It was as if something moved in front of me in an indiscernible way.

“Wait…what?

Did you just say you were afraid you wouldn’t find someone to help you renovate this new place you don’t want to move to? Why think about fixing it up if you’re gonna stay here? Where did that come from ?”

For a considerable time in our discussion we had remained fixated on the loss and what would be forced to be given up.

We were mired in the problem based thinking that itself is rooted in fear.

It’s really hard to see a solution when you are squarely focused on the problem.

It has long since been my thinking that very little in this world concrete, actually has the ability to frighten us to the point of self limitation.

There is not a lot “out there” that truly frightens us. Rather it is only in the space between our ears where  fear truly grips us. And even though this has “long since” been within my awareness – it never ceases to amaze me at how fear actually creeps sneakily in to influence us.

Ever the chameleon of emotions, fear most subversively roots itself in the thoughts of our dreams.

Often initially showing up as the voice of reason, cautiously shepherding our thoughts backward in time to some lesson learned or into the future toward some pain to be avoided. Until we are living somewhere but in the moment – this is the illusion of fear- it rarely occurs in the moment we are experiencing- fear almost always flourishes and thrives in the future or past.

Change in our lives invariably provides the perfect petrie dish in our being to nurture and grow the influence of our deepest fears.

In his book ” The Untethered Soul” , Michael Singerman writes:

“Change can be viewed as either exciting or frightening, but regardless of how we view it, we must all face the fact that change is the very nature of life. If you have a lot of fear you won’t like change. You’ll try to create a world around you that is predictable, controllable and definable. You’ll try to create a world that doesn’t stimulate your fears. Fear doesn’t want to feel itself … so you utilize your mind to manipulate life for the purpose of not feeling fear”

The idea that life’s changes are something many of us resist is not an epiphany. However the degree to which we are prepared to allow the internal Instagram influencers of our mind  to halt our full experience of life fascinates me. Especially with the recognition that these “institioriginally designed to keep us aware, awake and alive)

A personal desire to experience, as Singer puts it “the very nature of life”, with ALL its ups downs and growing pains, is continuously challenged by the paralytic influence of trying to experienced life free from change and pain.

This influencer of our thoughts, words and actions can literally halt any forward progress and growth, often before it can identified as the voice of some past pain or future anticipated loss, that’s just taken a little too much of the reigns!

Back to my friend and the impending move …our conversation concluded with that awareness that happens within when something “shifts” .

All of the sudden the vision was no longer focused on the fearsome issues change would create but instead we both found ourselves imagining projects the handyman could complete to realize a new home of dreams.

Reminding me of this simple truth.

What lies on the other side of the fear we imagine is beyond our imagination.

Talking with a particularly luminescent friend of mine yesterday, we reflected on how all too often It seems, fear holds us back in the most subversive and sneaky ways.

There is a perception that if we “strive to shine” we need to do so very quietly so as not to make others feel dimmer, for if they do all too often they will remind us that we are not “special enough” to achieve any truly lofty objectives .

We are conditioned, by those gripped by fear around us, to believe that “lighting it up” and allowing our own light to shine, we will almost inevitably be confused as arrogant. We limit ourselves in the fear others will interpret our self perception as being “better than”

Often this creates a roller coaster life experience of stellar moments of brilliant performance followed by jaw dropping idiotic behavior.

My friend shared, he struggled with this for a long time.

So deeply interwoven into the fiber of his being, that he unconsciously practiced self destruction and self sabotage, lest he left his peers thinking that he believed his “shit don’t stink!”

As he never intended to project arrogance on a conscious level, he figures unconsciously he must have concluded that “I better just behave in a way that contradicts what I feared people might think of me “.

Like many of us, his darkest place was loneliness and isolation, so he chose to play small and shrink so others wouldn’t feel “less than” and withdraw from him.

He shuttered his light.

His behavior was much less of a reflection of the infinite possibilities at our fingertips us through the power of an open loving heart (and self love is huge part of that).  Choosing instead to behave under the influence of the power of fear, simply to prove that he didn’t see himself in the way he feared those around him might see him.

How fakata !!

The truth is that’s just so over thought it proves fear is at the root.  The truth is if we weren’t supposed to leverage our gifts why would we possess them ?  

Put best …

“Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” — Marianne Williamson

So uh ..No dude- fear not projecting brighter than. precisely you  have a role to play and your part is to play so others may also be released to light the stage, to play their role, so we all can get on with the show!

In the eloquence of Williamson we were all born to shine, in order to manifest this light within for the precise purpose to light the path for others to find their own brilliance.

And in so doing collectively one day, we will brighten an what sometime appears to be an increasingly darkening sky.