day by day. brick by brick.

I have spent a lot of time laying the foundation for what I hope will be the best career of my life. I have spent long nights brainstorming. Thinking about all the ways things can happen. Contemplating different ways to say the same thing. Doing that over and over and over again. Burning the midnight oil if you will. Sometimes burning that candle from both ends.

I’ve tried before to do things my way. To pave my own path. Yet, I fell into a habit of serving the needs of others. Giving so much of myself to people entirely undeserving of the level of care I bring to the table. Well, what would happen if I decided I’ve had enough? What would it look like if I spent all of that energy that I have been spending on the dreams of others, on the dreams I get to call my own? How much progress could I make if I took my own dreams seriously? If I stopped getting in my own way. If I finally got it through my thick skull that it’s going to suck either way, might as well have it suck while I move towards my own destination.

Maybe today is the day. Now, I’ve said that before. Something feels different today. A new hope. A feeling that I might actually have a chance at making it work. An overcoming of whatever is holding me back. Even this blog… I write for fun sometimes. What if I just made it public? A dossier from the beginning of something [potentially] great.

Truth is, I love doubting myself. I love holding myself back. It’s kept me safe. Kept me out of the spotlight. For a long time, I chased that spotlight. Funny enough, I didn’t have anything I truly felt was worthy of it. But now? Now I’m discovering an elegance in my own words. A swagger in my own step. The things I’ve looked at in others, I see in myself.

I went to church the other day, and we talked about Matthew 10:37.

“Whoever loves their father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me..."

I read those words over and over as the pastor talked. I couldn’t help but feel an unsettling feeling within. I understand that it was Jesus talking. And I grasp that one interpretation means to say that Jesus is asking us to love him more than anyone. There is something selfish in me that arises when thinking that. How could I possibly love him more than anyone, or anything for that matter? It felt like a deep betrayal of my own being. Especially in the stage of life I am where I am just beginning to learn to love myself. To look at myself in the mirror and give a little praise. To tone back on my self deprecating internal dialogue. But now you asking me to forgo that? See, my mind takes that as an insult. I have a tendency of jumping to the end all be all.

Then I realized something. Ultimately experience can only ever be experienced from the perspective of the experiencer. Jesus was talking from his own perspective. What if he didn’t mean “me” as in him. What if instead he meant “me” as in the conceptual inward pointing sensation of being. The sense of self. That I am. But I can only say I am from my perspective and truly feel what I mean. Could it be that he wasn’t telling us to love him more than anyone, but rather to love ourselves first? Perhaps the language of the time was not specific enough to make the distinction. Or through generations of translation, the true meaning was interpreted in ways that best served a narrative. Maybe what he was really saying was,

“Whoever loves their father or mother more than themselves, is not worthy of themselves...”

Meaning, in my interpretation, that one will never feel worthy until they can look at themselves in the mirror and love the person looking back at them more than they do their own mother. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mom. More than most things. More than I love myself. That has been a driving factor of a lot of my decisions. Trying to be someone she would be proud of. To take on responsibilities I feel she would want me to take on. Yet, the more I listened to anyone else, the louder my own heart would scream. That’s not to say you shouldn’t heed the warnings of our elders. But it certainly hasn’t done me much good to ignore my heart for as long as I have.

As with everything Jesus “said”, it’s up to interpretation. There are certainly some golden eggs buried in a lot of hay. Above everything, I think he was really trying to tell us to follow our hearts. To listen carefully. As he says in John 16:13,

“when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears [the Spirit will speak to you in the way you will hear], and he will tell you what is yet to come."

That speaks volumes. For this revelation came to me from in between the lines. And when I asked my pastor about it, what I heard with my ears and what I heard with my heart were very different. And I what heard, felt to be true. So I have to believe that if the Spirit is going to talk to us, it will talk in a way only the individual will hear. You will know. It’s undeniable. But it’s up to you to trust it.

So I think what Jesus was really saying was this; be kind, be loving, be generous, be someone YOU would want to be around, and furthermore be who YOU feel called to be. Learn what you can from those who’ve gone through it but don’t be afraid to take a step away from the footsteps of someone before, to see uncharted territory, and live a life never before lived, for the Spirit is always with us, we just need to listen.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." Psalm 23:4

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Nyk