We all have our special dates, places and memories. As I mentioned previously, September 28 has become my special date, though not in a traditional sort of way. It just has a special meaning for me, and as it turned out today, for more than one reason. It’s a time to reflect on a year and to think about the road ahead. So it’s not a surprise that I’ve spent a fair amount of time today doing that. And just like a year ago, I’ve realized something new.
Have you ever thought about what makes people respect and cherish memory of someone they’ve never met? Someone who’s lived years before they were even born? There are graves in this world that get visitors every day, year after year. There are names, which are remembered with more just admiration for centuries. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m sure most of us have some role models — people we respect immensely, who inspire us, who help us become better versions of ourselves. We never knew them, we never met them, we might have been born after they left this world — and yet their presence in our lives goes far beyond their legacy whatever it might be.
It has just occurred to me today why we feel their presence so strongly. True, their accomplishments matter a great deal, but it is not what makes a “larger than life” person so special. We admire accomplishments while reading theirs book, listening to their music, watching their movies. These accomplishments may inspire our own thoughts, and yet they are not what makes presence of these people so special in our hearts. It’s the way they lived their lives.
After all, they were humans too. Yes, they were talented humans — some of them were talented beyond belief — but it is not what makes countless others cherish their names. They faced their share of problems and challenges — and sometimes these challenges were much greater than those that we face. They had the same time to spend in this world that we do, in fact many of them had way less time than an average life span. And yet they found courage to make a real difference. To get so much done. To push their own limits — which they all had — so far out. They found the courage to live. Not to exist, which in the absence of war, crime and suffering is so easy. But to live. To evolve. To prevail in their own struggles. To transform themselves day after day and to end up the people remembered by generations.
They were not bigger than their own lives. They were just bigger than our lives. And that’s why they keep inspiring us. We have our own battles to fight and our own limits to push. But to do that we need to find the same courage to live they had found. For there’s no better inspiration than someone’s Life.
Unmaskd 
🙂
#wecouldbeheros
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Epic.
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Well put.
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You’re so right in this post…
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Let’s all live that others can look up to us, but most importantly that we can look up to ourselves.
This does not negate my belief in spirit, but let me just say, those that I look up to the most knew they were not alone, that had a deep connection to a higher power, which sustained them.
Single best thing you’ve written (which is saying a great deal). Thank you for one more dose of inspiration. Fight on! ❤ Love this.
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Just pondering failure a bit, toying with the phrase…failure ~ the antidote to perfectionism…and before posting it to Tumblr thought to look here and voila, the emblem for balance. I haven’t visited this site for weeks admittedly so what drew me near? Is it the syncronisticity of our thought patterns because it sure wasn’t a happenstance by the way of Twitter. Whatever it is, thank you for so graciously sharing your challenges and successes with us. One more question…is the equanotic new moon an influence in choosing the date for which to reflect and plant the seeds for the coming year? namaste:)
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I’m glad you’re inspired… I hope it takes you wherever you want to go. Here’s my issue… I feel sad for the person who inspires you so much. I feel like their lonely. Maybe they have everybody in the world that loves them, but still doesn’t have a connection of normalcy. Maybe everybody will continue to see them as beautiful even/especially within their weakness… but I guarantee the beauty is a mask.
You could be talking about Edgar Allan Poe for all I know and in that case I’d be way off… either way…
I just think you need a girlfriend 🙂
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Anonymous, I absolutely don’t get what in the world you are talking about. Could you, please, be more specific? it almost sounds like you are talking to yourself.
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This user has been permanently banned.
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The PLot Thickens ….like chicken soup
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ralphbormet reblogged this on Living Your GoodLife and commented: In the absence of any inspiring words from me lately, contemplate these. –rcb–
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“Ever since I became Unmaskd I’ve been occasionally told how courageous it is of me to share my weaknesses with the world so openly. As flattering as it is, this goes against my very core definition of courage. There’s nothing courageous about broadcasting your weaknesses. Courage is facing them, squashing them and moving on without looking back and with nothing pathetic left to broadcast. If only doing it was as easy as writing about it.” – Unmaskd
I have a lot to write in response to this Unmaskd quote, so I am responding here under courage although I could have put it under one of your procrastination posts as I think that is the only weakness you have revealed to your readers, so procrastination is what I’m going to address here.
What is procrastination? Laziness. If you break it down, when any of us procrastinate, it is laziness–not doing what we set out to do and finding all kinds of diversions to take us away from the task. Along with the laziness, maybe it is a defense mechanism. If you really want to tackle this procrastination, ask yourself “why”. Maybe you purposely don’t want to do something based on projected outcomes you’ve determined will be the result and you don’t want to deal with the consequences whether good or bad. Maybe you work so hard that you want a break from whatever great results you get. Maybe inside you know the things you procrastinate about are because deep down you’re doing them for the wrong reason. Maybe you’ve set such high goals that it’s easy to get discouraged. The maybe’s are endless and only you can really get to the core of your “why”.
The other “why” to be answered would be why do your weaknesses bother you so much? Do you care too much what other people think? Is it the fear of death’s finality and not having left a great enough legacy? Why do you beat yourself up over your weakness? I’m sure there are other question’s why that will give you insightful answers.
Maybe there is an addiction issue. Everyone has addictions whether positive or negative, nevertheless they are those things that we struggle with that we don’t use control over. Maybe you’re a procrastination addict (just kidding). But maybe in broadcasting it a solution can be found. First of all, you’re human and will never be perfect without making mistakes. It seems you place such high expectations upon yourself but that it’s never good enough (or maybe you can admit and accept when you think something you did is good). Admitting the weakness whatever it is helps to get to the core, determining how it affects your life and others’ lives. Maybe by exaggerating it to the point of ridiculousness would put it in a new perspective to see it differently. Commedians do it all the time. Perhaps then, you can accept the weakness for what it is, face it and move on from it.
Lastly, I recently learned about the “reactive mind”. I was curious about that L.Ron Hubbard book a long time ago and after reading a portion of it, I recall there were a lot of large words beyond my vocabulary that I didn’t want to have to look up every few pages at the time. Anyway, I found a short video at the library on Dianetics recently which satisfied my curiosity. I found it quite interesting and thought it made sense. Apparently a religion is affiliated with it and I’m not promoting the religion, but as with all good information no matter what the source, we can extract what makes sense to us. Here is what I recall from the video scenario as an example they gave regarding the reactive mind:
A man is driving down a road at night, it’s raining, he get’s in an accident hitting a tree and becomes unconscious, a woman discovers the car, calls for help and the paramedics take him to the hospital. According to dianetics, the man’s brain was recording everything in his unconscious state–the sounds, the smells, everything other people were saying, including their conversations. The two paramedics are talking while the guy is in the ambulance and the one asks how his relationship is going and the guy answers he doesn’t want to be tied down, he thinks he’s going to break up with her. Month’s later, the guy that had the trauma is driving with his girlfriend and things are going well when she mentions he should meet her parents when it starts raining, the man’s head starts hurting and he gets agitated and says, “I don’t want to be tied down right now, I think we should break up”. The man really doesn’t know why he said those things so abruptly and broke up with his girlfriend with whom things were going so well. According to dianetics, his reacive mind was kicking in. Apparently, it’s not just during traumatic experiences that the brain records and stores in the reactive mind–it can be when under the influence of drugs or alcohol, while sleeping, etc.
I started wondering just how much of our reactive mind takes over without us realizing it when triggered by a similar situation or key word. According to the DVD, there’s a specific set of questions in the book to work through with a partner over and over to desensitize the event and what the brain has recorded to undo and ultimately no longer have that reactive mind response. Maybe, unmaskd, some of the weaknesses are simply reactive mind responses or physical reactions or inactions to what your brain has recorded while in a different level of consciousness.
I have every confidence that you will overcome your weaknesses. How do I know? Because you want to and are willing to do what it takes (I think–but only you know for sure). No one really does anything until they are ready and really want to, otherwise, the will that want’s the opposite of what we really want takes over and the battle begins. Fear seems to tag along with the will of what we truly want.
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Mm…procrastination is not laziness I don’t think?
Is it really a weakness? …Mm…it may not always be.
Procrastination may sometimes be a self- defense mechanism which protects us form premature or ill timed action. Or indeed, it may prevent us from making a mistake or grave error.
Doing something we want to do out of time is nearly as bad as doing something we don’t want to do at all. Pushing against what may be an important and natural prevarication is not necessarily the way to go…
I would suggest that we ultimately get more done if we embrace the procrastination element when it shows face. Life is ebb and flow after all…
Procrastination can bring a feeling of being stuck it is true. But maybe that is not always such a bad thing. We all need times to stop reflect and listen in. For some one who like s to be always active and productive this may appear to be procrastination. But in actual fact recouping energies in this way helps more effective action when the time is right.
It may feel like Procrastination stops us from doing what we want to do… but this raises two points. Rarely do we do things we do not want to do if we are in any way independent of thought, word and deed.
Therefore if procrastination is such an issue to us, we might benefit from questioning what we think we really want!
If we are holding off? Then something within us is holding off. Either the time is not yet right, OR we do not really want what we think we want…
The important thing is to work out which is the case…and stretches of apparent procrastination gives us that breathing space to do just that…
#simplereally
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