Remember Your “Why”
From April to May I can’t count how many conversations I had with friends about burning old selves down and letting go of toxicity and vices. Over coffee with a friend we talked about purpose and balancing the need to grow with the need, the pull, to remain authentic. I tucked my legs under myself and sunk into the leather couch, “it isn’t about sharing all of you, it’s about being intentional about what you do choose to share.”
It’s also not about shedding all of you, it’s about burning down the parts of you that you layered on out of fear, comfort, complacency, or a need to please others. It’s so much easier to come up right under your potential because breaking through ceilings reminds you of two things — how human you are and how capable you are. I would volley with which one is scarier, but deep down I don’t think I’m much different than everyone else. It’s scary to know how capable you actually are of success because that truth requires that you stop selling yourself short and start putting in effort. To know that you’re capable is to make a choice out of holding yourself accountable to pursuing your heart’s desire — if you don’t you’re a coward, if you do you can still potentially fail. Regret lives with only one of those choices though.
Over Mother’s Day weekend I sat poolside and in good company. My heart was finding its way back into my body and my words were finding their way onto pages in a journal. Each sentence and moment of silence poured into reminding me of what I believe my purpose on this earth is. I firmly believe that I’m meant to help other people and to challenge myself to break cycles in pursuit of my own personal fulfillment.
I find purpose in love. I find meaning in manifesting it. I find joy in community. I find fulfillment in belonging and creating environments where others feel like they belong too.
I’d strayed so far away from my life’s purpose that the only way to find it was to run away and lose myself in another city and a lot of barbecue. I cried on the plane on the way to Austin and slept on my best friend’s couch as I let page after page fill up in a journal. I tucked my legs under my body when I was sitting on her couch, days before I did so at my favorite coffee shop, and her and I talked about so much of the same. We talked about why I was straying so far away from where my heart naturally rests — I care about how things feel way more than I care about how things look. The discomfort I felt in my everyday life is ultimately what found me on her couch.
I’d wrapped each of my truths under layers of other people’s opinions of what I should be doing with my time and where I should be placing my love and heart. The layers eventually suffocated me and left me feeling like everyone understood my “why” better than I did. The distance between your heart and your mind can be miles long when who you show up as in your every day life isn’t who you are when you’re sitting alone and in silence. The distance is even more loaded when you find yourself in situations that make you hate the life you’re looking back on and, yet, you can’t blame anyone but yourself for being in them in the first place.
On couches, with my legs tucked under me, I found out that coming back to yourself requires burning down the old parts that no longer serve you. It requires bravery. It requires acceptance of the temporary heat because you know it gives way to a higher reward. More than anything, it requires accepting that human error factors into our lives more than we’d like to admit.
To remember your why you have to painfully admit that you’ve strayed away from it. You have to admit that you let it happen, watched it happen even, but were too disassociated from your own agency to stop it from happening. You have to admit that you can change it and that channeling your own power and remembering your why is the only way to actually start.
It’s doable.
