Finding Values
What does it look like to live in authenticity, kindness, compassion and acceptance? These are things I value, that I want to be and to be around. I grew into wanting these things as my world slowly turned inside out over the last ten years.
To me, authenticity is about being who you say you are and admitting what you do and do not know. It’s about being humble enough to absorb wisdom but then to call bullshit when you see it, both in yourself and in others. It’s about owning your dark and your light and constantly working on whatever causes you to overtly or covertly hurt yourself and others. It’s about learning and growth, and about not having all the answers. Remaining open to sadness and grief but also to awe.
Kindness and compassion go together for me, although they are not synonymous. Kindness is wanting the best for others, even when it’s not what you want nor necessarily what you think is best. It’s wanting others to be happy even if you’re not. Whereas compassion can and does include wanting happiness for others, but it’s more about letting others feel their feelings without having to fix things for them, without imposing your feelings and experiences. Recognizing that they may have a value system that is different from yours and not judging them based on your value system.
Acceptance is the recognition (not resignation) of what we can and cannot control. It’s about letting go of the need to change others, of wanting circumstances to be different from how they are. It’s responding to what is, rather than reacting to what we think “is.” It’s about making space for all the feelings we have, and especially those about what we cannot control or change.
I can’t say that I embody these things, but I can say that they are what I think I want the third chapter of my life to revolve around. “My best life” includes caring for Arya for the foreseeable future, and doing that with some grace has and will continue to shape my life, likely for the rest of it. Our lives are defined and “boundaried” by relationships, whether good, bad or indifferent. And our values are not independent of those relationships. Some relationships we can choose to leave, others we can’t. I’m still trying to wrap my head around my life and my responsibilities, but if I can manifest even a little of what Arya believes me to be, it will probably be enough.