How sweet it is to be loved by me

Me: I'm back with a New Year's resolution to do a daily writing practice.

She: Welcome! How is it feeling?

Me: I'm determined to do this. Not in a blood and guts, bludgeoning kind of way, but in a purposeful, deliberate way. I have to write. I want to and need to do it. Words are my great love. Writing is a gift. And I have spent my whole life tangled up in knots about it. I'm 55 now, and if I'm lucky I'll have another 35 - 45 years left in me. Time to love this thing called writing, and do it for the love. Can I pull it off? Yes! All I need is a new sound track.

It's pretty devastating to realise the soundtrack that haunted my childhood is still broadcasting loud and clear 50 years later. Mine's nothing special, just a rendition of a Beatles hit from the 60s: "Then I saw my face!! I'm such a big loser!!" And actually, it's no longer loud, or clear. But it's still there, a low-level background rumble that's so familiar I don't notice it any more. Trouble is, the messaging, the words, carry clout, even when I'm not conscious of them.

So that loser sound track really has to go.

Something good has come from all this procrastinating over writing. I have been reading too much great quality Buddhist teaching, popular science and psychology, listening to many many Deepak Chopra Facebook videos...  getting to grips with that question that's been bugging me since I was old enough to string thoughts together, "Who the fuck am I?"

The Buddhist teachers, the Buddha himself, Deepak Chopra and even the Dalai Lama have been very helpful with this. They all have different philosophies, but they all insist on one important point--I am not who I think I am. I am not who I've been told I am, or who I was expected or forced to be, or who I resigned myself to be. This is seriously great news, because I've been dragging around a suitcase of very awkward and heavy shit about this very subject. Back breaking, spirit breaking, nasty stinking lies perpetuated by the lyrics of my soundtrack. I believe those guys are right.

I am not a loser. I am not naughty or dirty. I am not bad or broken. I am not too serious. I am not too sensitive. I am not lazy. I am not lacking. I don't talk too much. I don't have my head in the clouds (actually, I do, and it's a perfectly fine place for my head to be.) I'm not too big for my boots. I'm not a smarty pants. I'm not funny (peculiar) to be worried about the meaning of life. I'm not anti-social. I'm not a freak for writing in a journal. I'm not a sinner, either. Or a slut. Oh yeah, and I'm not a disappointment, at least not to me.

Whew!! That's better out than in.

Deepak, the Buddhists, and the DL also all agree that I am wise, creative, compassionate, kind and loving -- sounds divine! We all are, at our core. Until we get brainwashed to think otherwise. So really, the work of life is to un-believe all that bullshite that's stuck to us over the years, and get back in touch with our gorgeous glorious divine insides.

That of course is at least half a life's work for some of us, maybe more. But it's good work. Honest work. So much better work than dragging around a couple of ton of toxic rocks.

I think my new sound track will be James Taylor's hit from 1975, "How sweet it is to be loved by me!"