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I like to call self-betrayal, the act of spending your entire life pretending to be someone that you're not, leaving unused the unique potential that you came into the world with.
I find it impressive the amount of people that continue to do things that they hate, with no real purpose or intention behind their actions, simply because of the fear of not finding anything better to do.
We pretend that we like so many things that we dislike, because we assume that such pretending makes us interesting, and that bringing to the light the fact that we dislike such things, will make us boring and uninteresting. Funny enough, in my opinion, doing so is exactly what makes us boring and uninteresting.
There's enough for everyone
See, there's enough people and tastes to like everything, so why would you have to pretend liking something when there's other people that would happily do it for real? Do you not realise that in spending your life pretending to like things that you don't like, you're using up all the space and time you've got to actually dive into the things that you could truly like?
Little faith
We assume that because we don't like many of the things that are brought to our attention, we won't like anything. We stick to the first thing that we try, and with little to no hope of a second thing being better, we don't even dare to skip that one first thing to explore what the second thing could make us feel.
We have such little faith in the universe and the world around us, that we limit ourselves to that one thing that we tested and made us feel terrible, as if there was nothing else better out there. We do this with friendships, romantic relationships and jobs. We can sometimes even spend 2 hours of our life watching a crappy movie that moves nothing in us, because we don't think that our time could be better spent doing something else.
That is what I call pure self-betrayal. Not allowing yourself to find out what it is that sparks joy in you, merely because of fear and lack of faith. Fear of that other thing not existing. Fear that this mediocre feeling that you get doing that one thing over and over again, is as best as life can get for you.
Cheesy quotes are right
Well, today I'm here to tell you that that's not true. And I'm begging you to please, stop betraying yourself. Because when you neglect cheesy quotes and songs that tell you that you only live once, you're indeed showing your back to the most important thing that you have: you.
You were given the opportunity to come into this life and explore. You get to feel whatever you want to feel. Joy, excitement, sadness, excruciating pain, loneliness, anxiety, peace, boredom, hunger, satisfaction, pleasure. All of that, you get to feel. And you get to combine all of those feelings and to appreciate the contrast between one another, to feel them even more deeply.
Plenty more than 1 day
So why not allow yourself to feel all of that, while slowly discovering who you are and unfolding into that? You don't have to figure out what you like and what you want to do with your life in 1 day. You also don't have to stick to what you tried for a few years, for the next 30 to 50 years, just because it was the first thing that you tried. That's non-sense, why wouldn't you get to change? Why would you betray your true self like that?
That's like telling a baby ''Here you go. You get to go into the world, explore and become who you want to be. Here's your shot'', and then, 18 years later when he's finally kind of understanding how the world operates, you tell him, ''Actually no. You know that first thing that you tried and didn't like? Well. Now you're stuck with that. No room for change or growth. You're going to keep doing that and pretending that you like it, for the next 70 years''.
Stop being crazy like it's normal
Doesn't that sound crazy? I bet you agree with me that it does. And that's exactly what we do with ourselves as we grow older. We take from ourselves that powerful gift that we came into the world with, and we act as if that's totally normal. And truthfully, it sucks that we do that because:
We don't deserve it
We don't have to do it
So today, I encourage you to make a little change that will go a long way. Stop betraying yourself. Stop robing yourself from the gift of change, and allow yourself to slowly unfold into the unique person that you were born to be.
Just ask yourself: what's the point of rushing through 1 decade, if that's going to make you miserable the rest of your life? Doesn't it make more sense to take things slow? Doesn't it make more sense to observe, to learn, to grow, to evolve? I think it does. And today, I hope that you allow yourself to also see your life this way.
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