Will this choice bring me long-term fullfillment or will it bring me short-term gratification?

Did you ever spend a summer afternoon as a child on the swing in your backyard trying to find out just how many licks it does take to get to the center of a Tootise-Pop?

I did. It took me an entire afternoon. I counted lick after lick, patiently waiting to get to the center. I made it. I knew the answer. I even wrote a letter to the company to let them know. I never heard back from them.

Perhaps that afternoon was a foreshadow to my life's purpose. Could it be that my life's purpose is to find out just how many shards a heart can break into in one lifetime?

Every choice I have had to make this week has centered around the long-term fullfillment of healing my heart, my emotional self, versus the short-term gratification of wallowing in the gut wrenching pain that makes my heart want to jump out of my chest. I know. You must be asking yourself, "Where is the gratification in that?" The answer is that it is just easier.

Each choice I had to make forced me to choose just how gentle I would be with myself, to actually choose to love and honor, not only myself, but the process...the healing process. That, in truth, then must be my real life's purpose: To experience LOVE without pain. What kind of love must that be? I suppose, ultimately, it is indeed Self-love.

I have known since my earliest childhood recollection that I was meant to "find" my life's partner. I have known that my life's partner and I would do a great work together. Now, at the age of 47, and after a lifetime of searching and waiting, I realize that the life partner I was meant to find was myself.

"'Remember that with every step, you are nearing God, and God, too, when you take one step towards Him, takes ten towards you. There is no stopping place in his pilgrimage; it is one continuous journey, through day and night, through valley and desert, through tears and smiles, through death and birth, through tomb and womb. When the road ends, and the Goal is gained, the pilgrim finds that he has traveled only from himself to himself, that the way was long and lonesome, but, the God that led him unto, was all the while in him, around him, with him and beside him'" (Hislop, 1985, p. 81)!

As a child, my voice was consistently and methodically stripped from me. I was never asked what I thought or felt about anything. I was not allowed to have an opinion. To have an opinion was considered to be talking-back. To talk-back was to take your very life into your hands. So, for self-preservation, out of a need to survive, my voice was silenced. Even in dire times, when I needed to be able to protect myself from those who would abuse me, I could not, for I had been silenced. There was no voice. I could not speak up or speak out. So an entire childhood passed by me into young womanhood where I was abused over and over again: verbally, emotionally, psychologically, and yes, even sexually. Why is it that those that we should be able to trust most ~ our mother, our father, our cousin ~ are the ones from whom we need the most protection?

In travelling from myself to myself, I have found my voice. Every fiber of my beingness compels me to speak out. I have the ability to say it like it is, and I must. I can no longer be wary of rocking the boat. I can no longer hold back.

This is the choice that will bring me long-term fullfillment. To choose, in every moment, to speak out, and to speak with no fear. The fears of judgement, ridicule, and condemnation have been released. I no longer need to succumb to the short-term gratification of mere survival. My long-term fulfillment is to thrive, for my very fire to burn brightly like a bonfire. My voice is the fuel. As my fire burns bright, the healing transpires.

Are you experiencing the sort of profound breakthroughs that Stevee and I are having? If so, please tell us about them. We really do want to know. We are in awe of this path on which we find ourselves through this work. Let us know that you are walking beside us.

Over the course of this week, we will be focused on the right question, Chapter 6, Am I Standing in My Power or Am I Trying to Please Another?

Until next week, remember, ask yourself each day, "How am I going to love and honor myself today" (Ford, 2003, p. 147)?



REFERENCES:

Ford, D. (2003). The right questions: Ten essential questions to guide you to an extraordinary life. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc.

Hislop, J. S. 1985. My Baba and I. California: Birth Day Publishing Company.