I like to read those little books known as Daily Meditations. I’ve quite a few of them over the years. I want to share what I read this morning because it really seems to fit my life today…which is what these little books are supposed to do.
From The Promise of a New Day by Karen Casey & Martha Vanceburg for September 2:
Children see a flat world and are told it is round. We are trained very early to disbelieve the evidence of our senses. But there comes a point when we begin to question what we are told and to feel that our own vision is probably as keen as anyone’s.
Independence of thought can be an admirable quality. It’s also a quality that distinguishes those we call crackpots. Where do we draw the lines?
It’s important always to try to disentangle what we want to believe from the evidence of our senses. Wanting events to have a certain outcome can blur our view of what is actually happening. We can delude ourselves to the point of denying the reality we perceive in favor of some ideal, some fantasy.
Testing our beliefs against what our own eyes see and the opinions of those we respect will keep us balanced between skepticism and delusion. Life is rich and baffling enough without our fantasies to complicate it.
I think it would hurt my parents to know how difficult it was for me to discover my true self after I became an adult. I can honestly say that the person my family perceived me to be is not the person I now perceive myself to be. I like the latter much better.
I am a late bloomer, I believe. I was working on trying to find my true self in my 50’s and I still wonder if there is more in there to discover. If I were to put an age on when people begin to question, I think it is normal for young adults in their late teens through their twenties. It coincides with their leaving home and trying to make a life for themselves separate from their parents. This can be painful to watch, but if they can come to know their true selves before they start bringing kids in the world or jumping into a career, I think that is fabulous plus more.