… it’s sometimes easier to stay caught up in the busy schedules and demanding roles than it is to slow down and look at yourself.
-- Serita Jakes

Your job requires that you wear many hats – you’re the director, implementer, and evaluator. Oh, and you make the coffee and fix the leaky toilet. At home you tirelessly plan the meals, prepare the meals, clean up after the meals, read them bedtime stories, tuck them into bed, prepare for the next day, get everybody up the next morning, go to work, work 8 hours, come home, plan the meals, prepare the meals, clean… This friend has an issue that needs your attention; that friend has a circumstance that requires your analysis; and the friend over there has a situation for which you are being asked to provide a remedy.

You run around all day, feverishly moving from one task to the next. You carry on 3 conversations at once – one on the cell phone, one by email, and another with a person standing before you. You walk so fast people wonder whether you’re being chased, and when you talk you sound like the town auctioneer taking $10 bids on a trip to the Bahamas. When you get home at night it’s all you can do to keep your eyes open to find the bed. You are absolutely too busy, too tired, and too engaged in everybody else’s stuff to give care and consideration to your Self.

When was the last time you took a good look at yourself, not just a look in the mirror, but a hard, beneath the surface, not what everybody else thinks look? When you looked, did you actually see someone who’s got it all figured out and under control and capable of handling someone else’s stuff without missing a beat? Did you actually see someone who has moved beyond the childhood issues and traumas and who has placed them all in proper perspective and can use them as lessons to help others navigate their journey toward healing and good health? Did you actually see someone who could sit back on his/her laurels and not worry about the next meal or dollar for all was guaranteed to be perfect and copasetic? You didn’t see anybody like that?

Oh, you didn’t actually take a good look. What, are you afraid of something or is it too much work?

It should feel disconcerting to live your life without caring for your Self and your own needs. It should feel like an act of duplicity to place other selves before your Self and not go within to unearth and examine things so that you have a clearer view of what you’re working with and what you’re offering to others. It’s a blatant act of self-neglect to not look completely and honesty at your Self, and it’s even more abusive to release the unexamined Self on other unexamined selves.

Think of your Self as you would a cluttered workspace. There are piles and piles of stuff – important papers on top of books on top of cardboard boxes on top of nondescript Rubbermaids stacked in the far corner spilling over one another. The stacks are so high and menacing that even thinking about poring through them is a daunting and insurmountable task. So instead of tackling the clutter, you place a table covering over the piles and a plant on top of the table covering, pretending there’s nothing underneath.

Until the day something comes along to knock the plant and all the stuff underneath the table covering to the floor. Now look – you’re exposed, broken, scattered, and messy.

If you’re not stopping to look at yourself, taking inventory, releasing what no longer serves you and creating new ideas and perspectives, at some point, your Self will spill out and away. The pressure will propel itself and you’ll spew out like a water spiket. Better to take a good look at you before you come out and scare the acca-bacca out of you and anybody in your range.

Sadiqqa © 2007