Dorota Stanczyk on dropping the masks you build for others and marrying yourself instead. She argues that accepting all your feelings, even sadness and shame, heals more than running from them. Stay open to who you actually are rather than chasing who you think you should be.
Chapters
For last 10 years, I have been mastering how to create an image, a brand, identity. I have been also mastering how to create my own image, crafting how people should perceive me, or at least how I thought they should perceive me. And I would start to believe in that image so much that I will find every single possible situation to prove myself that that image was real. I started to believe that that image was who I was. So every single time I would not fit into that image, into that vision of myself, I would punish myself for it. I would beat myself up. A while ago, I realized that that image was a mask I was wearing, a mask of protection from the world. And I think we are all wearing some sort of masks. And even spirituality in many cases has become a way to escape what we think or feel, a desperation for otherness. We would like to experience something else that than the present moment. But when you think about this, when you are focusing and looking for happiness, you are actually experiencing constantly the absence of the happiness. So you are feeling down, right? So we think and we believe, we know what we want and who we are. And in the relationship, very often we say one to another, this is who I am. Accept me. But do you really accept yourself? Do you accept when you feel down, when you feel sad, when you feel disappointed, when you feel angry, when you feel ashamed or guilty, or you try to escape that feeling as soon as you can change it and suppress it? There is nothing more uncomfortable than a desire to not feel something, of feeling bad, for feeling bad. How liberating would it be to say, today I feel sad and I love myself with this sadness. Today I didn't achieve my goal and I love myself anyway. Today I screw up on the stage and it doesn't matter because I still love myself. Don't ever put any condition on how and when you will love yourself. If you believe that there is something wrong with you, no tool will help you. So stop creating in your mind this image of who you think you should be and stay open to the possibilities, to who you might become without rejecting who you are here and now. In order to rediscover who you are, you need to accept that you might not really know who you are in the first place, because you can't think who you are and feel who you are at the same time. So stay open to the mystery, stay open to the possibilities without trying to project who you want to be, what you want to have, what you should feel. Alan Watts said, the future in which you already know the outcome has already happened. So give yourself permission to be here and now. Give yourself permission to feel it. A while ago, I decided to drop my mask. And that was the day when I promised to myself that I will never cheat on myself again. That day, I not only liberated myself from suffering, but I also healed myself from a very rare disease I was suffering from for over 10 years. Years of my life. I was experiencing tremendous pain. I was unable to live normally in this society or have a normal relationship. It took me a long time to realize that I was doing this to myself. And even longer to forgive myself for it. That day I promised myself that I would marry myself for good and for bad. That I will love myself unconditionally. No matter how many people loved me or didn't, I might never be anything anymore. That I am here and now, and that is perfectly fine. Because I am everything already. This was the biggest gift I have ever given to myself. And this is my wish to all of you. Love yourself because you are your everything. Thank you.
