Maxims To Live By

In just over four months I will celebrate my 60^th “trip around the sun.” When I was younger, I believed that by the time I reached this age I would have life figured out. I would be confident. I would be secure in who I am. I would have certainty about what I believe. I would be wealthy. I would be perfectly content with my life. I would no longer care what other people think of me. I would be “living the dream.” In fact, when I graduated from high school, I thought all of that would have happened long before now.

I did not realize then that life is a continual process of learning, growing, adjusting, changing, questioning, and questing. I am sure that someone told me that. I am also sure that I thought I knew better.

This all came flooding into my mind this morning when pondering what to share this Sunday as we honor our graduating high school seniors during our service at Unity Spiritual Center Denver where I serve as senior minister. I am sure that when I was a 17-year-old graduating from high school that there were adults in my life who were thinking similar thoughts to mine now. Something like, “I wish there was some way I could sit down with each of these young adults as they move through this rite of passage and implant in their minds how special they are and how precious life is.”

As I thought about what I would say to them, I realized that much of what I would say not only applies to them, but also to me and perhaps to all of us. We hear all of these adages, but we don’t always take them to heart. If we could all receive these three simple yet profound maxims for everyday life, I trust that we would all live more complete and fulfilled lives.

Know Yourself

You are one of a kind. There is no one else in the world just like you. You have something unique to express and share with the world. Celebrate what brings you joy. Pay attention to what excites your curiosity and imagination. Follow what inspires you. Honor your passions. Connect with what you value. Listen to the desires of your heart. All of those are signs and signals of your soul calling you to your greatest adventure and to the fulfillment of your highest potential.

Love Yourself

Love is a verb. It requires our active participation. Loving ourselves requires us to know ourselves at depth. We all experience fear, pain, sadness, joy, anger, elation, and the plethora of emotions that are part of the human experience. Loving ourselves means feeling the emotions, not ignoring them or suppressing them. Loving ourselves means inquiring into the emotions and connecting with their messages. Loving ourselves means being compassionate with ourselves. Loving ourselves means nurturing ourselves. It means asking for what we want and need.

Loving ourselves means being kind to ourselves. We all do and say things that in hindsight we wish we had not. Loving ourselves means not beating ourselves up for those things, but recognizing where we may have been out of integrity with our values, apologizing when it is appropriate and making amends when possible.

Loving ourselves is a life-long, day-to-day, moment-by-moment, choice-by-choice process. It does not happen automatically. Most of us are not trained to do it. We can learn. It takes practice.

Be Yourself

As Oscar Wilde once said, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” The courage to be ourselves begins with the practices of knowing and loving ourselves. We often find ourselves surrounded by family and peers who don’t understand us and who want us to change so they are more comfortable. The world would have us conform to behaviors that it deems acceptable. Life gives us multiple opportunities to stand in our truth and be who we are.

It is human nature to want to be liked and to fit in. It is more important to honor our need to be loved and to belong. As author, Brené Brown says in her book, The Gifts of Imperfection,

“Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.”

It may be necessary to modify our behaviors to ensure our safety and security when we are young and dependent upon others for our well-being. In doing so, it may be challenging to adjust and reclaim ourselves when we reach an age at which we become self-sufficient. It may take time. We may need to ask for help. Do whatever it takes. It will be worth it.

When we make the effort, and it does take effort, to know ourselves, love ourselves and be ourselves, we will live the most rewarding and fulfilling lives possible.

If I could speak to my 17-year-old self, these are the things I would say. I sure hope my soon-to-be 60-year-old self is listening!