I have lived my life as many people looking up to people for inspiration and in moments of hard times reminding myself of their turmoil and also their successes. Someone who has always inspired was Nelson Mandela. There have been many times in my life be it in the workplace or in education where I have had to face opposition and sometimes violent opposition. In these moments I would remind myself of Nelson Mandela if he could shake the hands of those who tortured him and go on to change a nation then I could get through whatever it was I was dealing with.
I had looked to people who had remained true to themselves, true to their beliefs and maintained their character. This to me is the definition of success.
In 2005 I went through some hard times, these lasted for a couple of years and well involved incidents that were harrowing and also saw me nearly lose my life at the hands of another. There has to be something said to know yourself by losing yourself… I could go on for days about this time… But that’s for another story…
A while ago I was thinking as I do about those who I looked up to… and I realised that the face looking down at me was me… I now a woman in her 30s had decided for the first time in life to pat myself on the back and realise that now I had lived for XX years there was many many things I have done, achieved, conquered… thinking about it I had accomplished the same principles of my idols and like them remained true to myself… I had stared down monsters, defeated a kraken, escaped a nightmare, partied like it was 1999, been shunned for my skills and then ultimately celebrated for them… I had been able to stand in a room with the people who did horrible things and seeked the truth to be heard through legal and just means…
This made me think… as children it is good to have idols people to look up to… as an adult we would like to think that we have inspirations… people who inspire us to be / do, but if we look in the mirror all of us have defeated krakens, been our own knight in shining armour and if we look hard enough done it on our own merit…
We have all saved the kitten from being stuck in a tree only to realise the kitten was ourselves… I guess what I am trying to say is when you face a bad moment remind yourself of that legend that looks at you in the mirror, the one who has defeated all those krakens and remind yourself that there will be more krakens but your no longer a warrior, your becoming a great sage aging like fine wine… there will always be others who make us want to do x or y but this should not come at the cost of forgetting that it was you who got you here in the first place?
We often forget about those moments in life, choosing at times to not remember. Sometimes this failure to remember the bad moments in life also causes us to not remember how we overcome them and became who we are today? We often forgot that the fact that we are standing here right now means that we overcome something, someone, some system, whatever… we overcome to get where we are today, at that moment of darkness when there is no end to the tunnel we forget that one day that tunnel just stopped existing… and even though it will appear again be it through the workplace, relationships, dealing with systems etc etc we are armed with an artillery that grows with age…
on a final note, growing old has been the best experience because it is the collection of all of my experiences and grows daily enabling me with a larger and larger pool of experiments to grab from when making hypotheses about dealing with the situations of life…