If you ask the sculptor, they’ll tell you that statue was always there; that underneath the rough and unhewn stone was the finished product waiting to come to life.
Before starting the David, you can bet that Michelangelo could see it in his head. He breathed life into the work with every strike of the hammer on the chisel, eventually arriving at the final and finished masterpiece that was as breathtaking in its magnitude as it was in its detail.
Peace came for Michelangelo when the David reached its final form.
As I’ve watched my two children grow, I’ve been granted the monumental responsibility of shaping some of their form as well. Thankfully, by some instinct that I still struggle to define, I started off my role as a father with a desire to give them as much control as I could over their own growth and their own direction. Why is that important you ask… well, it’s because of this.
I truly believe that people who have the space to find out who they really are experience the greatest amount of happiness, and cause the least amount of problems.
Yet even under the best of parenting, we still find our image of ourselves shaped by the unavoidable trauma of being human. While still young we are affected by buffetings and realities of life. It might be bullying at school or the disapproval of a parent at home. It might be a birth into a culture that immediately defined a pathway for you that didn’t really resonate with who you were underneath.
Maybe it was an all consuming desire for something that turned out to be not what you really wanted.
There are so many ways for us to lose connection with who we really are, and to think that we are someone who we are not. Worst of all is when we feel a need to ‘be’ something that doesn’t feel congruent with who we actually are. This leads to a life of sadness, frustration, regret and mourning, as nothing you do feels like enough, and no success will truly compensate for that ever present feeling that nothing is as it should be.
Because unless it is authentic to you… it’s just going to feel wrong.
But let’s face it, it’s hard to come to a full knowledge of who we really are. I was 47 years old before I finally began to understand what I want to do with my life. It was a long hard road to get there, and I’ve made so many mistakes that I struggle every day with regret, and the fear that I will not be able to make right what sometimes feels so very, very wrong.
I honestly wish I had had the space to ‘discover myself’ as a child, or as a young adult.
But discovering yourself truly takes time and the space to try things to see what resonates, and that requires safety, and someone who can teach you how to realize what really resonates with you deep in your soul. I think we often do kids a terrible disservice by telling them who they are, and guiding them into the ways that will make us feel like we are ‘good parents’.
This leads to adults doing what they think they should do, rather than what would actually bring them joy.
Over the last four and a half years of writing this work, I’ve come to understand myself in new and surprisingly wonderful ways, and I’m trying to live according to who I really am, not who others would have me be. I’ve changed so much of my philosophy and understanding, and I can tell you that getting in touch with who I really am has provided a greater sense of peace and happiness than anything I have known before.
And I truly wish that for you as well.
The journey is not easy, but every layer of mistaken identity that I remove helps me to find a greater depth of peace, appreciation and wonder. I desire more to understand rather to be understood, and I find myself marveling at the smallest of things that I previously took for granted.
May you find a way to get to the truth of who you really are. It might shock you, and it might test you, but there is nothing greater that you can do for yourself than to find a way to release all your traumas and fears, and embrace your truest self in all your wonder.
It will change you, uplift you and embrace you in a peace that will surpass your understanding.
May you also find joy.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
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