Have you ever noticed how small children march right up and say hello? When faced with meeting new children, young kids approach in a fearless expectant way of joining the fun.
They don’t stand there wondering: “hmm, i wonder if those kids are kind? Are they friendly? Will they like me? Do I know them?”
Kids expect other kids to be kind and accepting up until the age of 8 when they start to get wounded and conditioned by adult belief patterns they acquire at home. As adults we’re packing decades of history and hurt in the bags we drag behind us daily. Years of disappointment, internalized pain and heart break can manifest an outer shell of protection that facilitates our feeling separate from the world.
Feeling rejected is a pain most people carry, yet sadly that expectation of rejection, and the subsequent action toward others continues to water the prickly plant of separation we long to bury.
When we have the courage to lay down our “history” and walk forward expecting something different; we experience the world fresh and new as if a layer of possibility snowed down over night.
Regardless of how long you’ve known someone in your office, in your home or at the playground, tomorrow can be a new day. Even 10 minutes from now can be experienced as a fresh start. People react on a primal level to our internal belief patterns. When we drop our story, our sad life history and how it’s always been; the world can perceive us as we are in the moment~fresh and new as we are right now.
We paint the box we live in each morning as we meet the day. When you stumble into the bathroom and see your reflection in the mirror, remember that you’re staring your internal artist in the eye. What you carry out the door in your own mind will be reflected back on the grand mirror of your world. I suggest that we squirt that mirror with Windex and begin again right now. Fake it until you make it if you have to; but facing the world with an expectation of being accepted will set you free in ways you never imagined.
xo
~girl in mirror by Norman Rockwell
