phil in the spaces

What ARE you DOING here?  Why ARE we here, doing what we are doing?

Re-assessing our lives and the trajectory of our progress is vital to living a life fully realized.  We are NOT what we eat.  We are the decisions that we have made along the way.  The decision you make today, no matter how small, will define who you become tomorrow.  Are you who you want to be?

Now I am in no place to judge anyone.  Not a soul.  No one.  I have made mistakes and wrong decisions.  And while those mistakes and decisions have led to many consequences that caused me to totally regret those actions, I have come to know myself in ways that have caused me disgust.  So….after a time (a long time) of reflection and depression, I decided who I want to be.

I want to be LOVE.

Not LOVED, but LOVE.  Yes, we all want to be loved.  We all deserve to be loved.  But I want to be LOVE.

I have repeatedly been in a position where I felt that I did not belong.  I’m not talking about being at a party with people who are acquaintances and with whom I have nothing in common.  I’m talking about being around people regularly with whom I am supposed to be doing life and knowing that something is systemically wrong with my presence.   It is horrible.  I never want anyone else to feel that.

I needed a change in perspective.  Part of my feelings stemmed from a selfish center of disconnect in wanting to gain something by being around these people.  Other parts of my feelings came from low self-esteem fed by envy, jealousy, and a want to be like these people.

A massive paradigm shift in my perspective has now allowed me to view strangers and acquaintances, and even those I am close to, in a way that puts me in the position of feeling, seeing, and understanding their possible experiences and perspectives.  It is called empathy.  I will never truly and fully understand perspectives others have of their situations, decisions, and consequences; but I do know that emotions are universal even if triggers are not.  The ability to healthily express those emotions is also not universal.

The results of this paradigm shift in perspective has inspired in me a desire to express genuine love to others.  I don’t care where you are emotionally, mentally, or spiritually.  I don’t care who you are physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.  We all deserve love.  I have decided that I will not allow my past decisions to define me or define how I treat others.  So…the decision to love others is now defining who I am.  But how did I get here?

I had to push through a time of emotional healing.  That for me meant a time of complete honesty to myself about where I was and what I had endured.  I had to admit what I was trying to be before I could discover what I truly was and I wanted to become.   I also had to take time to listen to the ever-so-small voice way down deep inside of me who knew what I truly wanted.  The voice was soft and distant at first.  I had to remove much inside that was clouding and blocking that voice.

Now mind you, many come to this perspective change in a moment of clarity or realization that often forces them to face facts about themselves; a type of “ah-ha” moment or near-death type of experience.  I didn’t have that single moment.  Something tragic happened to me and I went into shock and shut-down.  It took years of mental and emotional processing to acknowledge and accept that my life was changing, had changed, and that I had best get on board or I was going down with the ship.  In fact I am still working toward who I want to be.  Only now I have a much better idea of who that person is…LOVE.

Click the picture Read the artilce

I would like to now take a moment and clarify something.  The love I talk about being, or becoming, is not a sexual/romantic love, nor is it an existential, swirly, universe-uniting type of new age love.  I am talking about a down to earth, individual, from the heart, authentic love.  It is a love of acceptance.  It is a love of encouragement. It is a love of true belief in an individual. It is the love you feel in your safe place.  It is a love of refuge.  It is a love of understanding.  It is a love free of all, ALL, judgement.  It is a love of forgiveness.  It is an honest desire for the success of others in life, whatever success may mean to the individual.

So I try, and often fail, to create around me wherever I may roam, a space of warmth, safety, welcome, and love, around me at all times.  I have begun to smile at strangers more often regardless of how I feel about my day.  Small gestures like allowing others to go first, or holding doors for them.  Just remember…you never know the impact that the smallest gesture may have on someone’s life.

Be inspired to truly love others the way you wish to be loved.

Only you can find you.  Only you can be you.  Only you can move you.  

Eric Thomas once said, “You cannot afford to live in potential for the rest of your life. At some point, you’ll have to unleash your potential and make your move”.  

Fill in the spaces with love.  Fill in the spaces of others’ lives with love, and you will see the spaces in your life begin to overflow.  It is not about controlling “karma”, it is about changing your perspective.  Stop focusing so much on self and begin focusing on others.  You will be shocked and amazed as you watch love blossom inside of yourself and others; watch it spread throughout your community.