What If You Were Never Broken At All?
When you’re ready to drop a lifetime of suffering, you’ll know what to do.
After a life of worry and self-inflicted torment, you hit a breaking point. You implicitly decide to either carry on living in a mental tomb or you decide you’ve had enough — that you don’t deserve to suffer any longer. That life isn’t meant to be this way. You realize that your long years of silent torture — living in self-doubt, overthinking relationships, work and friendships — were not the fault of any other person. It was not the world’s cruel hand. It’s not their apathy or malice. It’s because of you.
It felt like something was wrong your entire life. In rare moments when you were alone with your thoughts, you glimpsed the source of this suffering. Like a child who was afraid of the monster under the bed, you couldn’t help but take a peek to know for sure. When you did pull up the bed skirt, you saw the monster was actually a part of yourself. You believed you weren’t enough. You just didn’t stack up. You were defective, incapable of being understood by others, not deserving of love and intimacy.
Or so you thought.
So you quickly retreated under the covers and tried desperately to fall back asleep. This belief — this reasoned deduction about yourself based on your scant life experiences — was wildly inaccurate, but it’s how you interpreted the world. Who could blame you? You were just trying to make sense of your place in things. So like a seed, that belief burrowed under the surface, sprouting roots that wrapped their tendrils deep into the foundation of your psyche.
This belief that you are somehow defective begins to shape your life. It takes you out of the present and you become entirely future-focused. Things suck now but one day they’ll be better. One day I’ll arrive. But the longer you live, you lean that the one day never comes. You hit a point where you realize the ever-advancing goalpost of the future isn’t going to make things better. You understand the present is all you ever have. If your experience is a constant knot of fear and anxiety, how is the future going to be any better? It won’t.
Sometimes you just have to decide to stop suffering.
When you do, you’re forced to look at yourself deeply. You finally reach the one conclusion you never before considered: what if there is nothing wrong with me after all? What if you just had it all backward. How could your life be different? How much better would that feel? What if instead of carrying a feeling of constant unease, you decided to drop it like a heavy suitcase and go running with the wind? You don’t know how that will change your life, but what other option do you have?
There is nothing wrong with you. You are not defective or broken. You are enough just as you are. Trust yourself. Go with your gut and stop looking over your shoulder waiting to get “got”. Move with ease. Embrace life and know that if you allow yourself to open up and be vulnerable, the universe will embrace you right back. All it takes is trust — a leap of faith. And once you see how unnecessary your suffering is, it’s a leap you’re willing to take.
That sprouting seed of despair with its writhing tendrils was never real — well, you made it real by constantly feeding it. Cut off the food supply and it withers away instantly.
You were certain the monster under the bed would get you the moment you fell asleep. But it never did. It never existed at all. The only real thing was the fear you manufactured. That same artificial fear followed you around your whole life. It protected you from nothing because nothing was ever there. The danger was all made up. Once you see this, you know you can drop the fear once and for all. You can get back on the path you originally intended to travel in life, and you can travel it with ease and confidence.
Fear is a shallow puddle blocking your path. It looks deep, and you think you might drown. You hesitate to carry forward, but there is nothing to fear — there never was. Let go of your suffering and run splashing across with abandon.
The life you wanted is not in the future. It is here right now. Embrace it and it’ll embrace you right back.
