Home Truth's

Last night I was told some things about myself from somebody that I love. Things that were hard to hear. Things that I already knew. It's funny how you can hide your flaws from most people that circle your life but when you truly let someone in they become a mirror for the things you hate most about yourself. It can be very confronting when someone cares enough to call you on your shit and tell you to pull your head in but it can also be an eye opener to the issues in your life. So in an effort to be transparent I have decided to bare it all.

I judge people.
I judge the way people dress, I judge the way people talk, I judge the way people live their lives. I always say that I hate people who judge others but the truth is that I am so very bad at it and it really has to stop. It's funny how I can have compassion on the homeless and the sick and the poverty stricken but when it comes to every day people in my life I'm the first one to make a snide comment about an outfit or brand someone trash because their hair is just a bit too blonde. How can I say I love people when I write them off before they even speak a word. I am part of this worlds problems.

Some of the best people in my life are nothing like me at all, I can think of 3 of the closest people in my life who I wrote off as a dits, a nerd and a bogan. None of them are any of those things and if I hadn't of been in situations where I was forced to get to know them beyond first encounters I never would have gotten to know the hearts that were in them. I would have missed out.

I need to stop judging people, I need to shut my mouth and open my heart, I need to look at whats on the inside and not whats on the outside, I need to give people the chance that I hope they will give me. I need to change.

I am stubborn.
If I think I am right I will not back down, I will not say sorry, I will not hold out an olive branch. I will punish myself to prove a point, I will push people away if I think they are going to hurt me, I can be cold an aloof and unforgiving.

I promise you, dear reader (always wanted to say that), that I don't want to be that way. I have always had to fight in my life, I was told I would die before the age of one, then before the age of four, then when I was fourteen. Being a stubborn little sucker is what has kept me alive and is what has kept me fighting through a world of pain in my life. I beat heart disease, I beat depression, I beat an eating disorder, I beat becoming a statistic. I held on to my life and my sanity like a bulldog with a ball and I guess that has become so ingrained in me that I don't really know how to stop it. I let it run over into my every day life and I keep people at a distance and I hurt them and I hate myself for that.

Inside my heart breaks at the thought that I could be capable of hurting anyone or pushing anyone away but my exterior has become so hard and so well polished that it's hard for me to be vulnerable, to let someone else be right, to care just a little bit less and smile just a little bit more. My past is no excuse for my present. I have to let some things go and save my stubbornness for when it really matters because if I'm wasting all my time fighting about the small stuff then I will have no energy when I'm fighting the big stuff.

I don't know how I can change these things, except by being aware and praying for wisdom and actively trying to treat the people I encounter on a daily basis better. I'm a work in progress.

Smile often
Beth

I want out

As I sit here on a Sunday night looking at blogs from people all around the world I can't help but be drawn to the concept of change. I have been alive for 22 years and have only left my country three times. I keep dreaming up these adventures I want to go on, places I want to see, people I want to encounter and yet I haven't done any of it.

I always promised myself I wouldn't trade in my big crazy dreams for a 9-5 and a house in the suburbs and as I start to get older I begin to wonder... Is that exactly the path I'm heading down?

I don't want mediocre. I want to eat too much pasta in Rome, go ice skating in central park, study ancient relics in Egypt, help rebuilt buildings and lives in Haiti, see a live band at the The Viper Room in Hollywood, catch a fashion show in Milan, pay respect at the battlefields and museums of ww11. I want to stay up all night discussing literature with someone who completely disagrees with me, make documentaries about the lives of people who's stories are more powerful than mine, stay on couches of kind strangers who don't speak any familiar language besides kindness. I want to go somewhere where I can still get lost and I don't already know someones cousin the first time I meet them.

You only get this one life, 100 years if your lucky, and we're young, so why does society make us think we want to buy a little piece of land so we can build ourselves a comfortable little box where we can close our eyes or switch the TV station any time we see something that makes us uncomfortable.

What if you didn't play by the rules? What if you dared to pursue what you really want, not what your parents want, or your partner wants, or the bills require you to do, but what you really wanted when you were still young enough to believe anything was possible.

Live that life. The rest can wait.

And the truth is, that if you go and follow your heart you will come back with so much more to offer to the people you left behind.

Just one more pair of shoes

I talk a lot of shit.
Read this blog and you would think I was the next mother Theressa. It is filled to the brim with my thoughts on saving the world, helping the lost find their way, handing out healing to the broken, speaking on behalf of the silent. But the truth is, I just talk a lot of shit.

It has been said that the devils greatest weapon is not to get us into any great evil but instead to keep us distracted. I know that personally I waist so much time, I focus so much energy on things that just don't matter. I can speak of wanting to do great things, write great books, change the planet, feed the hungry but it is all just words as long as I m too caught up stalking people on Facebook, drinking cider or tea with my friends and spending all my money on shoes.

I wish I knew exactly what had to change but the truth is I don't think it's something I can figure out with another night of self analyzing or trolling tumblr for just the right inspirational quote. I think the only real way any of this will change is when I start actually doing all the things I talk about doing. The unimportant will fade away as I spend time engrossed in the important.

You see, distractions only come when you are idol, when your life is lacking, when you feel lost. Once we start walking in the things we are truly passionate about, spending our time and money investing in things that are close to our heart then the trivial will make its way into the peripheral of our hearts where it was always meant to be.

The truth is that deep in my heart, under all the makeup and the shoes and the insecurities, I completely believe in the importance of every persons life. I am totally convinced that every persons voice deserves to be heard and every story is powerful. I believe that if every person lived being true to themselves and following their dreams the world would be a richer place. Every piece of my body aches to see people realise their potential and yet somewhere along the way I got lost.

I got scared, scared that if I offer the things that are deepest within me, the skills that are closest to my heart, the dreams that are uniquely mine, that they will not be enough, that I will find that there is nothing special about me and then I am left vulnerable for rejection. Not only rejection I can control, not a rejection of the exterior, but a rejection of the heart.

What if I offered everything that I had and the world rejected it?

Where do you go from there?

I'm tired of being afraid, I'm tired of settling for the status-quo, I'm tired of having so much in me and yet settling for less. The only thing standing between my life now and the life of my dreams is me and my stupid fear.

All I know is I don't want to stand in front of a child when I finally get my act together and have them ask me "why didn't you come sooner?"
And to have to reply with "I really wanted another pair of shoes."