Flotsam in Our Ocean of Life

 

 

“To love someone deeply gives you strength.  Being loved gives you courage”. – Lao Tzu

Living takes a great deal of strength and courage.  Living within communities and institutions can try to have you feel ashamed, guilty, weak and needy.  We all carry secrets about how we feel. Heck, we torture ourselves over such secrets.  The things that happen in life can have you carry bits and flotsam in our ocean of life.  We have all, at some point, if we have lived long enough, hit undertows that threatened to drown us in frustration, sorrow, anger, and the flotsam becomes hard little shells embedded in our very psyche.  Those can float to the surface and impeded our peace and serenity, our sense of a positive self, and can appear without notice.  And then we notice.  Our body notices.  Our mind notices and we begin to overthink.  Our emotions start to waffle.  Our soul hurts.  We withdraw or act out.  We need such care, compassion, and a sense of being loved by something or someone.  It is that that gives us courage.

There is the flotsam that we brought upon ourselves, by decisions and choices.  There are things in life that happened to us that we did not ask for nor deserve.  But we managed to scrape through.  When we consider what a miracle it is that we are here, at all.  Imagine what the generations of our families have gone through to survive, to overcome, to thrive and end up having children that eventually led down to us.  We are simply miracles.  No matter how unloved or ‘unloveable’ we may feel, there has to be something that loves us into being, and then, we love ourselves into thriving and the generations go on.  We are resilient.  We stay down for a time and then we rise from the depths of rough ocean ready to face another day.

No amount of love from others can heal us.  Only we can do that.  We may think that, if we love, we will be loved.  Not true at all.  If we do not love ourselves, we will spend way too much energy trying to find it from outside ourselves.  We, eventually, hopefully, realize that seeking love outside ourselves is never completely satisfying.  We have to find the flotsam, bit by bit, as it surfaces, and deal with just that until it is broken up and healed.  When we love ourselves, and only then, can it truly heal.  Otherwise, it sinks back into the depths and will rise again to haunt us. 

It takes love of self, and love for others, to give us the will to delve into our soul and find our strength.  Love, from others, does give us courage to do that work. 

I love myself.  I matter.  I love you.  You matter.

©Carol Desjarlais 8.17.24