Being Real, Being You

So much talk on blog land about living this way or that way. We set ourselves up sometimes to roll in the mud of being discontent. We read blogs, reading only the stuff that they want us to see. We see only clean houses, pretty houses, sweet families. We look at our own reality and think, gee whiz I want life like that, so pretty, so serene, so different from where I am. So we set out to imitate, we seek to be like, we put on another skin, only to find out it doesn't fit, because the core of our being is shaped differently.

Anyone who knows me well, or has known me for any length of time, knows I am a firm believer in individuality. I march to my own drum beat and every single time I try to push that mindset down and try to conform to any kind of mold, I get uncomfortable. It never works. I need to be me.

You all know that simple living is for me. None of this rush rush, mad dash, grab it all, keep up with the Jones' for me. I like not being tied to the grid. If suddenly the world lost power, well I want to just carry on, no bump in the road that I can't get over. I have felt this way since I was a young teen. Its nothing new. When I lived in Southern California, I was the most miserable person. I hated the life there. It was full of "impressions" and "keeping up appearances". It was hard to find a person that had time to sit back and talk about the meaning of life. I lived in a house with no land. I lived in a house with no breathing room.
Now here in blogland, I watch people take a left turn, a right turn, a left again and on and on until they end up where they started, but along the way they purchased so much to go along with whatever road they were on, that now they have all this stuff to deal with for a life they never really wanted to live, but only thought changing the circumstances and surroundings would change the stuff that is internal. The personal peace stuff. The who you are inside stuff.

My life is 100% right for me, but not for everyone else. But even though my life is right for me, its not a perfect life. There are illnesses, worries, days when dishes don't get done, times when if you came to visit, I would have to move stuff off a chair for you to sit down on. Dust abounds, and the other day there were actually cob webs on my dining room light that made it look like something from The Adams Family.

There is always the unsettled-ness of finding the right kind of eating for us. I love health food, but get weary of having to figure out meals, and I then miss having a plump donut filled with stuff I can't pronounce and fat enough for a month. Sure, sure they make healthy donuts and yeah I have recipes for them too, but what is better than a glazed chocolate dunkin donut, of nearly 300 calories ! I suddenly don't like to exercise, something I have always loved. So life here is not perfect. Close to it though.

If you like your appliances, go for it ! If you like your red meat, oh I just can't say go for it on that one, sorry. Red meat is just not good. Colon cancer, fat, the poor old steer, your heart, the list is long, just can't give ya that one, sorry. If you like going out to eat, go for it. If you like sparkly clothes, go for it. If you like huge houses and can afford it, go for it. If you like only wood heat, go for it. If you like hanging out clothes, go for it, I do. If you like having 20 children go for it, and God bless you ! If you want no children or 1 child, go for it. You get the point. Live your life and not someone elses. If you want to wear your hair short, do it.

I spent time trying so hard to fit into the Mennonite world. What a bad mix for me. I am outspoken, feisty, talk about what I read, am open minded and hate dresses. I worked at it, convinced it would make me happy. Thought God was telling me to be that way or at least that is what everyone there told me. Here I was angry inside, like pushing a square peg into a round hole. It hurt, it didn't fit and sure enough, it wasn't what God wanted for me. There are many doors into eternal bliss. I am a better person walking far and fast from that way of life. God had something much different in store for me.

Which reminds me, I heard something on the radio the other day about "Bible Thumpers" so called because they use the bible to measure up other peoples faults, not their own. Ouch.

I think Christianity is the only religion where folks are more concerned with other peoples righteousness than they are with their own.

Anyway, be true to your own journey in life. Sit down, make a list of the things you really love in life. Write down 50 things that make you happy. As long as they are not harmful, against your moral values, live them. Surround yourself with the things that make you feel good about your life. Don't read some other blog and say, oh yeah I want to be them. You never will be them or have their life. You can take some things from their life that you know will make you happy. There are some folks that have a real knack for decorating and seeing what they have done makes you feel happy, then go for it, do the same or something like it. But whole life style changes are serious and need to be looked at carefully. Look before you leap so you are not having to head back to the old way cause the new way just didn't fit into your circumstances.

And final word of advice, taken from Henry David Thoreau's Walden "I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind. " Wise man this Henry David...

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

painting by my daughter Melanie, shows its ok to be different