I feel no shame in expressing that I have been grown up in an era where your beauty is defined by the number of likes you get on Facebook, or my thoughts are precious if they are tweeted and shared over and over again by friends, acquintances and strangers; where speaking and writing good English is a tool to be an outlier amidst highly illiterate and low quality educated masses and you can easily exploit it by a mere power of words and seem to be genuine if you get time to jott down your beautiful words-the bottom line of which is to just keep boasting without "walking the talk". I feel no shame in admitting that I have never walked my talk in so many branches of my life because I was enjoying some illusions which were and never will be mine. If I look good, "thankyou" to the legacy of my family which is beautiful from multiple generations. If I can speak with a powerful vocabulary and impressive fluency, "thankyou" to the budget driven high quality education granted to me by parents which is a Mercy in a country like Pakistan.
The astounding idea here is that "Where am I?" I am not blaming myself here. I'm just talking about the great gifts Allah bestowed me with- I didn't become special but I was born special. Unfortunately, we all go through lows in our daily lives. We all feel the fear of being unwanted and unloved which ultimately leads to anger. And so many people become the victims of our rage- which comes from the dissatisfaction of the pure beauty that lies within us. So why do we get angry in the first place? Because if a person who is born special like me deserves no bad treatment- my self image makes me angry, overseeing the fact that if I'm born so special then why is the feeling of rage instilled inside of me? The answer is not to allow other people walk over you, it is about questioning your own insecurities. Your strengths are not the liabilities of another person. In fact, your strengths are shadowed by your own thoughts and quest for Perfectionism- you think you are not enough but you are enough and it makes you no less vulnerable. You have to be vulnerable in order to grow your spirits and self-confidence. You keep perfecting yourself but actually you are numbing yourself. You lack wholeheartedness and you can never be wholehearted unless you are self-compassionate and tender towards yourself. You can never be pleased with others if you are not pleased with yourself. And that doesn't mean you are shielding yourself from the potential scars which wound you- because vulnerability is to show up without any shame of being scoffed at or called a loser- and shame derives its power from being unspeakable and risk averse; extracting the joy out of everything you do.So, often when we say not to explode our anger onto others and practice self compassion- so; would the anger diffuse into the air like a perfumed scent, getting itself rescued from the destiny of being the killer of another person's pride who did not deserve it in the first place? The answer to it is certainly a NO. Anger is still there and would have aggravated further had it taken the shape of a monstrous attack on anyone out of the blue. Whenever we are angry, we are angry with our blessings which is a result of lack of gratitude and the hunger of perfectionism. And when we tend to combat our insecurities in the quest if being a perfectionist with the superficial tools and tactics or becoming a workaholic, it least helps, in fact it makes things worse. The only question you need to ask sincerely is if this person was not around, who would have been the victim? Maybe you were the victim of your own anger. But you cannot be the victim and the monster both? Well, nevertheless you are the victim and the monster is your haunted past and if you do not have the courage to re-visit it, it means you are deceiving yourself. You have to absorb into the darkness of your past and resolve it- mostly by engraving the positivity from it.
So coming back to art of hiding our insecurities behind the beautiful curtains we tend to hang across our true images, if I am getting a minimum of 100 likes on my profile picture or a million praises for my accomplishments, that's not going to be a symbol of my self worth. My self worth would only lie in being the urge to be vulnerable to follow my dreams- to do what I love and aspire to; cracking some really hard nuts on the way. And if you are not strong enough to embrace vulnerability, then you are in the sea of blaming and throwing tantrums at others by holding the god gifted illusions you were born with and using them as a weapon to blame others only. To love yourself, you need to seek vulnerability and seek responsibility for yourself. Show up yourself not to be just appreciated, accepted and pampered by others but to be nourished by your own strengths and be seen as someone who fights with great courage. Your own strengths make you stronger only when you make them vulnerable- and vulnerability has its own limits and boundaries too which can align with our internal spiritual values; only exception is that the boundaries are not derived from Shame. It is not about what I should know about myself or you should know about me. It is about who actually I am and how strongly I keep nourishing myself by making my powers vulnerable- it's fun and joyful- keeps you engaged to the world. Remember, you told God you were powerful enough to face the challenges of life to be a human, so take use of your strengths which you see as imperfections, and fight the battle of Life by becoming vulnerable. You will see too much darkness on the way. But the more you combat the Darkness with your enlightened spirits, the more authentic you need to become. Alas, when you numb the darkness, you numb the Light.
The best recipe is to acknowledge that the perfect being on this planet was Holy Prophet PBUH and he did not seek perfection by using social media or pursuing a destination which was extraordinary, -e never aspired for any shield of armour, he embraced the Light by being vulnerable authentically even before Prophethood came to him. It is not because he did not have those facilities, but because these routes are not required for perfectionism- what we do is just numb ourselves. Alas, when you numb the darkness, you numb the Light.
Inspired by the teachings of Brene Brown and Harriet Lerner.
