Your Head

Been talking to a cousin the last few days here and there and it has me putting things in perspective. I write, not because I feel like I’m good at it, because it allows me to get things out of my head, to get thoughts on “paper.” I thought about this while realizing what the things inside my head have caused.

Let me start off by saying I am so very thankful for all that was done for me, all the time given, and all the lessons taught by my uncle, but I have let it hold me back. “If you’re not going to be the best at it, then why bother doing it at all?” I can hear this question ringing in my head so loudly even to this day.

After talking to Chad about it I realize that he done it because he wanted me to realize the greatness he saw in me, greatness that I’ve never seen, and he left too early, too suddenly to tell me about. What my developing brain took from it was don’t do it if you’re not immediately great at it. To know why it left me feeling like there would be nothing I could ever do you’d have to know that man.

Have you ever met someone who was good at everything? Every sport came naturally, every task that seemed insurmountable to you they could accomplish in their sleep, everything you wanted to do they had done. Now this was not that man, because he was not good at anything instead he was GREAT at everything.

Later on in life I found things that he wasn’t so great at and I decided to overdo those, because that was going to be my way to impress him. I yearned for his approval for him to tell me what I had done what I had achieved was good enough, all the while letting his words dictate who I would become.

His words, that yearning, led me to fear trying new things. It led me to lay things down that I desperately wanted to do because I was scared I would never be great. While he intended those words to push me to try harder, to learn more, to never quit until I had mastered what I was doing, I allowed those words to limit me because I was scared of never being good enough.

Now at 43 maybe I’m finally grown enough to choose to understand the way they were intended. Maybe at 43 I will be able to use that as fuel to push forward and learn things I was scared to fail at. Quite possibly at 43 I will find my voice, find my place, achieve goals put in place by seven year old me. While I will never hear “I’m proud of you” from him maybe I will be able to tell myself in the mirror.

Today choose your words carefully, know they bring life, they set fire to passion, and fan flames that can and will change the world. They can also kill dreams, stop creativity, and plant seeds of self doubt that will leave a grown man questioning his worth.

I choose happiness, I choose love, I choose to be a better me.

I love you.