Those Brave Enough

I like people who risk being themselves in this world that always tells you that you are not good enough being yourself. I love people who pursue their dreams, who fall, get up, shake the dust off and continue on their way, a little bit bruised but wiser. I admire people who are able to look forward and see things in all their reality and not turn around to the safe harbor of the known.  I am fascinated by the cloud walkers, the dream weavers, the solitary flowers, the introverted, the conspicuous, the ones who are always there but that no one sees until they’re not. I choose people who do not hide, who do not give up, who do not think they are especially capable, but work to get where they want. I am moved by people who go through life without a mask, who are the same with me as with a more important person.

Among all the good people, those who amaze me the most are those people who recognize that life is change, that you are not the same today as you were a year ago or yesterday as today. These are the people from whom I learn the art of being authentic without losing sight of the fact that being authentic does not mean being the same as you were yesterday or ten or fifteen years ago. Or is it that we have to be like our  ten year old self  to be authentic? Or our 20 year old self? No, life is change, it is a constant race with oneself to become who you should be, losing yourself to find yourself again.

I do not believe in what they say about the value of permanence as an absolute measure of authenticity. I do not believe in the value of binding things or people so that they do not escape. It is a useless exercise just as it is useless to try to catch water with your hands or to bottle time. Life, as a poet  once said, is a flowing river  and is not for us to try to paralyze it, constrict it, suffocate it or imprison it in any way. It is to be lived and soaked in.

In this way we will walk our path slowly, in awe, and  when we reach the end, we will realize as we look back that it could not have been otherwise, nor would we have wanted it any other way.