Jan 29
False Positives: Chapter Six
What if there is no calling? What if the only purpose is that there is no purpose? What if all the meaning we put on the life we lead, leads to the life that is meaningless?
What if meaning is as simple as … love. As a verb, a noun and a construct.
Have you ever asked yourself why we complicate life by making it more complex than it actually is?
I guess I’m full of questions these days. Questions are some of my favorite things. Raindrops on roses and snow on eye lashes, whiskers on kittens … oh wait, that’s the Sound of Music and Julie Andrews.
Seriously though. What if that song represents everything our inspirational guru’s have tasked us with all along.
My contacts and colleagues in the psychology business have said time and time again, don’t go on social media. Don’t talk about your private or personal journey. Stay quiet if you ever experienced heartbreak or heartache.
Then, in my connections with professional authors, they put it all out there in books as well as social media. Some cautiously so, while others, a lot over the top.
In tandem, people are raving about how much they love Dr. Brene Brown’s work while also leveraging the inspired vulnerable to be the scapegoat for online bullying.
We are living in two different worlds.
Paradoxically, paying attention to the alternative reality theory. We’re here. In that reality. Now.
One says you are thriving in your own power while the others say, i will be super happy online while also participating in the destruction of a human beings life because of what it’s rumored to be said about them.
How can the world see the exact same dress, yet some say, it’s blue and others? Pink.
Watching people celebrate known predators while degrading the women who speak up against that person while also selling happiness, is a surreal, other worldly confusion soup.
Some people are selling the simple life, as long as that life includes people under 40, with whimsically lythe bodies willing to slink and slither into nearly naked poses of a sexual undercurrent. Or, the opposite, in puritanical Little House on the Prairie purity. Both are equally cherished and criticized.
Where are all the baggy jeans and t-shirts?
I am celebrating leveling up in age. Another paradoxical quagmire of confusion. Apparently, it is expected to be both physically attractive as possible, while daring to live greatly while also needing a nap, but choosing to run marathons, even if they kill us.
Just to call ourselves, ‘Ageist’? As a rebellion? Against … ageism and stereotypes.
Everyone’s in tandem very angry, but also very happy?
We are buying into a minimalist sophistication with happiness as our new currency, while selling high ticket happiness courses, books, and yes, conceptually overpriced clothing that’s really just a reflection of the great depression.
None of it makes full sense. All of it is someone’s idea of navigating the world in insane times.
Haven’t all decades and centuries before now also been referred to as ‘crazy times’? They have. I looked it up.
These are the roaring 20’s after all.
I’ve been on a personal journey to find my calling, purpose and meaning for almost two decades now. Long before the researchers in my field wrote an academic paper on it, then it was picked up by the pop-culture highway of rewriting.
What was my purpose?
Where was that calling?
How was there any meaning in all that failure?
To add insult to injury, the tsunami of online bullying took on the name “karen” as the final nail in my metaphorical coffin WHILE I was aging out of the American dream!
Now I can scream and yell to protect a name that also triggers me every time I hear it. Let ’em have it. All hurricanes have a name. Mostly female. Can’t fight that cultural norm.
Now I’m supposed to be a “wild woman” in a sisterhood when i’m really a coffee shop book nerd w/no desire to go Grizzly Adams sans beard.
I’ve been a beard. It was NO fun.
I went on a journey through Dante’s Inferno to discover meaning, purpose, calling and the great age revival.
It’s seems that all the popular women of my 20’s have come back with super ripped abs (again) while posing in provocative poses (again) to prove that they’ve “still got it”.
Girl … I never had it and never wanted it!
Women are forming circles and tribes and gatherings and yet, women will also turn on each other in a snap if they feel like it.
Lone wolves see that. Not sure why nobody else does.
Women are still selling ourselves only now, we’re calling it our power. I’m not posing in a bikini and I’m not buying a pair of leather pants or a motorcycle. My exercise routine looks more like Phoebe from friends, running in the park.
No coupling up with a twin flame, or larger than life nip tucks. I’m content in my crinkles and happy in my wrinkles.
Age isn’t just a number. It’s a social construct that labels us, for better or worse.
How did I find mine? The purpose and calling and meaning? I spent two years in a metaphorical social isolation.
I went into social isolation for two years. I heard my voice. I felt my own emotions. The journey back to self, the real authentic self, is more than the meme magic of easy button exploration.
It’s an entire evolution of emotions that involves centering one’s self and feeling the discomfort. It’s messy and sad and elation personafied and fearful and uncomfortable to say the least.
We aren’t complex creatues. We make ourselves more complicated than need be, because we are navigating a balance.
In truth?
Life is so simple. But it takes great courage to find that quiet, centered, calm voice no bigger than a whisper to remember who we were.
Who are you? The you before the world told you who you are? The you that you want to be?
Let’s be honest,
It’s so much easier to be you, when you have no trauma, no drama, no fear of falling and plenty of financial backing.
OR, when you have no choice but to be exactly who you are in spite of it all.
Maybe the calling is for you to return to yourself then to purposefully honor that. Nothing more. Nothing less. Exist. Love. Be. Create. Stay curious. Engage. Forgive yourself. Find your joy in the smallest of wonders.
But do NOT forget to also defend yourself out loud. Be bold in letting the world know that they can’t fork with your life. That’s part of it. The wild woman part.
Like the cat who just let me boop her tiny pink nose. Without biting me. Big accomplishment for such a small act.
Whiskers on Kittens. These are a few of my favorite things.
One of my favorite Tik Tok personalities ends every Tok with, “I hope you find your joy”
To me ~ that’s all the calling, purpose and meaning we will ever need.
A great song to remind us of our simpler life and a daily search for joy.
I hope you find your joy. That is now my favorite thing.
KH
@happinessnoir
henryhealing.com
