You Are Your Oyster

As I’m getting closer to my sixth decade, I’ve noticed that much of what used to excite, entertain and occupy me is no longer relevant to me. I look back and the most important, meaningful, valuable, and rewarding times in my life I spent enjoying the children. Taking care of them, growing along with them, was my joy and passion. Everything else pales in comparison.

All the energy spent on romantic relationships in our society and our obsession with them, with sex and physical attractiveness, is a way to detract from self-actualization and keep us trapped in meaningless pursuits, constructs, and superficiality. We’re influenced to play the roles assigned to us by our families, religions, society, and the media. We’re bombarded with these ideas of what we’re supposed to be doing, what’s expected, what we should want.

So we’re trained to look to the external to make us happy. If only I had the perfect relationship, if my family was like the ones on TV if I fit the expected mold, was popular and accomplished, a high achiever, had the perfect body, had all the newest fashions and things, was rich, pleased everyone, etc I’d be happy and fulfilled. We seek for the externals and for approval in efforts to make us feel worthy, loved, or for that temporary high, success, to attain the American dream. We’re seeking outside of ourselves to fill us up and feel good.

I did that and sometimes I felt good for a while, but always eventually I’d come down and I was there with myself again, there’d be that feeling of something missing, I’d be unhappy and try to control the externals again to fix it.

There were many external changes that I made that helped though and were necessary in order to be loving of myself that went against what they expected of me. What was really missing was I wasn’t being true to myself. I didn’t have a good relationship with myself. All the attention to the externals made me not know myself. I had to reconnect with the real me and when I did, everything changed for the better.

These days I don’t feel the need to seek so much outside myself anymore. I’ve found that I can find all of what I need and crave from within. There is not that aching emptiness anymore.

I used to wonder about the paths I could’ve traveled if I’d made different choices in my life, like if I’d chosen a different career, different relationships/friends, or if I’d gone on more adventures, would I have been happier? Would I be in a more advantageous situation now?

Now I realize it doesn’t really matter. I would have had many of the same issues to work through, would have probably attracted the same types of relationships and problems given my frame of mind and level of wisdom. The only thing that could have changed my trajectory would have been if I’d educated myself sooner if something would’ve triggered that within me at an earlier date. I believe we get whatever experience we need to help us become more aware. There are always opportunities if we choose to take them, to get unstuck, to get closer to the path of the logical heart.

So if you’re wondering about the what if’s, like you see that person you had a crush on from school, but you’re married yet you feel like maybe you missed out on something, or you’d like to stray and see? I’d say maybe there’s something that needs to be sought deep within. Somewhere you’re not being true to yourself, and it’s up to you to figure out what needs tending to.

I wish I would’ve grown up learning how important it is to stay connected with your inner being, your emotions, your truth, and how to keep accessing that space of love to make the best choices unique to me.

I’m so happy that I’m not caught up in all of that messiness of seeking the externals so much anymore, lol. I no longer wonder about the paths not taken and am so thrilled to be where I am now. I get curious and want to have new experiences, but ones that truly enrich me on my terms. I will invest my time and energy in what I truly want from the depths of my logical heart that have substance, meaning, and are loving of myself and others as much as possible.

I think it’s so helpful when people live from the inside out, where they are mindful, inquisitive, seek knowledge, awareness, and self-reflection so they can know themselves enough to navigate optimally. Keeping healthy boundaries while feeling confident to explore because they have access to that reservoir of love from within and don’t need to depend on the externals for their sense of worthiness and belonging. They know deep in their bones that they’re inherently worthy and lovable. They are their oyster, lol.