I have recently been reflecting on the beauty of humility and the amazing things that come with letting go of your own expectations and pride. It’s almost feels like you are able to experience more of your life. I never saw how much pride I carried with me until I came up against my own image and saw how obvious it was that I wasn’t who I was claiming to be. Now for me, this was a huge deal.

Being an actress for most of my life, I have always been very comfortable doing what I was doing. I almost had an air of cocky-ness about the way I worked and behaved. This cocky-ness resulted in some humor and confidence, but also frustration and entitlement. I often chose to relate to people in a way that was very volatile and unpredictable. The weirdest part about this is that I really didn’t know any other option in which to operate. I had been so used to doing it the same way for so long that I completely shut down the option of there being another way. It’s like that story about the fleas in a jar; put a bunch of fleas in a jar and stick a glass lid on it and the fleas will jump and hit the lid a few times and eventually stop jumping so high. Remove the lid and the fleas will continue to stay in the jar. They don’t know the option of jumping out exists until one of them finally does it. This changes everything for all of them. We are like that, us humans, jumping just below the non-existent lid we once came up against.

I think the purpose of life is to grow, inspire, create, relate and love. The only way we truly do these things is by being in the experience of life, looking for your failures in regards to how you are being in your life and seek to evolve, or as my friend says “transcend”.

If we have an idea of where we are going in regards to who we want to be, then we steer the ship in this direction. When we fall off course, we find the best way to adjust the wheel, turn back on course.

It is my belief that this is what sets us apart from animals, or fleas . I also believe it is one of the most beautiful qualities we have as a species, abstract thought and the ability to inspire and be inspired.

So I encourage each of you to take a good long look at your pride in who you think you are, design who you would ideally like to be, and check in with who you practice every day. If we look at life as an experiment, the hypothesis being your ideal self and the process of experimenting being your every-moment life-choices, wouldn’t it feel a lot easier to challenge your pride? Come up against who you think you need to be? Make the top priority becoming who you want to be, and enjoying the ride?

It’s like the ultimate science fair. With people all around you on the same journey. I’m thinking there wouldn’t be as much violence and oppression. But again, maybe I am naive.

Just some thoughts on this fantastic Sunday evening.
ox
allison