Yellow Silk Chair

What do you see in front of you? It's so simple isn't it? A yellow silk chair framed in yellow!
(That is unless you were/are a philosophy major and then you might argue that the chair isn't really there.... I was an English major so that won't be the topic here!)

What I am thinking about today is that we spend so much time in our lives trying to know ourselves, figuring out our parents,  finding the people we want to be with, birthing our precious children, and then trying to understand the people that they choose to be with. This figuring out period pretty much lasts our entire lives! We struggle with, we fight against,  and we can't seem to understand why people are the way they are. At certain points we even try to get them to be who we think they should be and then we try to make ourselves the way we think others want us to be. What a crazy cycle! But this is life and this is being human.  Where there is ego, there is struggle.

I used to think that when someone said "He/she is who she is"  or "I am who I am," that this was a cop out--just too easy an explanation. Today I realized that I can't find a better explanation for who people are; why they are the way they are. If I want to keep hitting my head against a wall to try to understand people, then that is my choice but why would I want to keep doing that? I have been doing that for 56 years and counting....No, today I am sitting quietly with myself and understanding the word "acceptance" for the first time in a different way.  It is so liberating! It's so simple! I don't discount the fact that we do and should keep working on ourselves but that is something that we must feel compelled to do all alone. It can't be driven by anyone else nor can we expect to drive someone else to a point of change.  We are responsible for a kind of fine tuning that gives us lives that become extraordinary.

 Seeing "the chair" for what it is invites us to either sit in it or to pass and let someone else occupy it. Seeing "the yellow chair" for what it is, allows us a kind of peace. I like to say that how we see life all depends on how we frame it. I think that goes for how we see the people in our lives as well.  As Maya Angelou so wisely said: "The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them."  "Believe them" doesn't mean change them-- they simply are who they are.

Before you sit in anyone's chair, fully occupy your own.  Find your own beautiful yellow silk chair and frame it in yellow!