After food, shelter and warmth, our most basic human need is to be loved, appreciated and respected for who we are. Somewhere early on in our young lives, we begin to mistakenly believe it’s what we do or what we have that garners our acceptance. We might even come to subconsciously measure others by what they do and have.
As we strive to claim increasingly authentic lives, it’s essential to maintain a clear distinction between who we each are as precious souls traveling the journey of this lifetime and the actions we take that shape our existence.
Last year, I witnessed two important people in my life take actions I neither understood nor with which I agreed. My immediate reaction ranged from anger to disappointment to sadness to confusion.
I was bystander to two highly driven, successful men at great odds with each other for months, such odds that they stopped talking to one another. After hearing one side of the story, my immediate inclination was to pass judgment and take a side, but I caught myself. To choose one over the other wouldn’t have been an authentic reflection of me; it would have meant aligning myself with someone else’s story.
I realized what matters most to me is my relationship with each of these two people individually, not their relationship to one another. It wasn’t my job to question the motives of either man that had left one appearing to be a victim and the other the transgressor.
While I couldn’t pretend that the facts of what occurred hadn’t happened, I kept in mind that the matter had been relayed to me by the person who felt wronged. On the surface, I completely understood why he felt betrayed. Yet based on my deeper, more longstanding relationship with the other person and the character of who he’d proven himself to be after more than twenty years of friendship, I knew in my heart that he was a fair person who always makes choices in the highest service of others.
Regardless of the isolated circumstances, it became much easier to stay neutral on the sidelines when I reminded myself of who I knew them to be, each upstanding, kind-hearted people not defined by their current actions. Besides, it wouldn’t have served anyone for me to choose a side. Instead, I chose my relationship with each of them.
While who we are ultimately dictates the actions we choose, we’re all human. Fears and doubts that occasionally creep in can cause us to do things that aren’t an authentic reflection of who we are, of our truest nature and character.
In such moments of fear or doubt, we might make inauthentic choices, but if we know who we are and for what we truly stand, we can always count on returning home to our core.
From home base, we readily recognize such moments for what they are – opportunities to learn and claim more and more of the authentic story of our lives.
