I just came across this, by Kent Beck of Extreme Programming fame:
For the first 40 years of my life I believed safety consisted of holding up a mask so I controlled how other people saw me. Heaven forbid they should see me as *I* saw me.
At 42 that mask became unbearably heavy. I had to drop it on the floor. The mask shattered.
It took a decade to become comfortable that I couldn’t control how other people saw me. That lack of control didn’t matter because I was already safe.
The remainder of my life has been spent getting used to clothes that actually fit. Apologies for the metaphor salad but I’m trying to say something that was incredibly important to me.
It might be helpful for me to learn that one now. I don’t have time, energy, or strength to even attempt to control how others see me. My pitiful attempts are in shambles and were probably poisonous to begin with.
I don’t have a ton of free time to blog lately so I’ll throw in a couple of other, possibly related lessons that I’ve been pondering recently, which I may also need to learn:
- It is freeing to believe, think, or know something that others don’t, and not always have to tell them.
- Anyone on Earth could say anything at all about you at almost any time, without your knowledge, to whoever else they can, but you do not need to care.
Blog Of My Sojourn 