Still Waters...

The liars that cause the most damage to lives are honest people. They believe their own lies.

Let me tell you an uninteresting story.

Picture credit: www.pinterest.com

I filled a journal from 2012 to 2014 with entries that I never bothered to read. In this journal, I constantly wrote down my challenges, my experiences with personal demons that I always somehow managed to conquer with my overwhelming positivity at the end of each entry. In 2014, I gave this journal into a friend's keeping and didn't see same till October, 2015.

2015 had been particularly challenging for me, and was thus tagged by me as my journey to self. "These challenges are what makes me human", I thought, "I will fall time and again, but the most important thing is that I rise at the end."

This should have been laudable. It turns out it was laughable instead.

I finally did an end-of-year retreat in December, 2015 and read the said journal. Guess what I discovered?

2015 was my year of journey to self. So was 2014. And 2013. And 2012. Every time, I'd tag a year, forgetting that the foregoing year had borne that same tag. To top it off, I was going into the year 2016 with EXACTLY the same challenges that I had been facing since 2012.

I had finally discovered myself and the girl I met was a nightmare.

What scares me most though is that I could have gone on without knowing. I would have continued to lie to myself and would have felt no qualms about it because I would have been unaware of the erosion I was causing to the very self I was trying to find.

God is amazing.

I chose not to make new year resolutions. I knew I wouldn't keep them. Instead, I am taking each day at a time, each week, each month, planning ahead, taking stock after. I am working hard to make sure that the next time I look into that mirror, it would reflect the self that I have chosen, not the self that I let myself become.

Picture credit: www.trans4mind.com

Reflection is not necessary, no. It is oxygen to any person who wants to move forward in life. You cannot be who you want to be if you do not know who you are or whom you have been. It is when you look upon still waters that your reflection can be seen undistorted- beauty, blemishes and all. A noisy mind tells you what you want to hear, leaves you floating in a quagmire, blissfully ignorant of where you truly are and what you are truly going to be. The past is needed to strengthen the present and prepare for the future.

I learned that the hard way. Do learn from my mistakes.