I see you! I see how hard you work. I see how you show up every day and put 150% into everything you do. You leave nothing to chance—not your marriage, parenting, career, friendships, or relationship with God.
I see how deeply you care about the needs of others and how you are willing to put their needs before caring for yourself. If you have to decide between yourself and your family's needs, you choose your family. I see how things like caring for your health, taking care of that toothache, and getting the sleep and rest you need are taking a backseat. I see how tired and exhausted you are.
You are committed and determined to be the best husband, the best parent, the best at your career, and the best friend you possibly can be. You set a higher and higher standard for yourself. You don’t cut yourself any slack. You are fearful at times and wonder if you can continue this pace. But you are convinced that you are doing good, and it pays to be good!
This all began many years ago. You discovered that you were responsible for yourself from a very young age. Although you struggled many years with feeling inferior, like an imposter and unlovable, you took responsibility for your life and took action!
You began by taking a hard look at your own life and what you didn’t like about it. Then you looked to the world without. You asked your world many questions.
What would make me lovable?
What does it take to be successful?
What does success look like?
How can I live a meaningful life?
What kind of career would make me happy?
What would it take to be recognized as successful?
Gradually, you formulated a belief system. That belief system became an operational system. The operational system became a lifestyle.
When you were young, you relied a lot on feelings and how doing things you loved made you feel about yourself. As a young adult attempting to create a lovable person, accepted by society and perceived as successful, you became much more analytical.
There was a subtle but definite shift from trusting your heart to trusting the cold, hard facts. As a result, your heart became less and less part of your day-to-day living. Eventually, the day came when you could carry out most of your daily tasks without relying on your heart's input.
Your heart came to represent the weak part of you—the part that your world judged as unacceptable, that could be too easily wounded, hurt, or angered. It was too fragile. It was important to you to be strong, so you came to trust the rationale of the data you collected and the system that you built rather than your heart.
Over time, it was as if you built a new person, personality, or persona. This person had a set of guiding core beliefs, rules of engagement, a code of ethics, and a checklist of what it would take to be loveable and successful. On that list were things like college, marriage, career, a house, starting a family, vehicles, status, success, recognition…
Living an ethical life with guiding principles, a work ethic, etc., is essential to living a life of integrity. There’s nothing evil about your success list. But unbeknown to you, when disconnected from the heart, they take on a life of their own, creating a “perfect” person but one without any true emotional or spiritual connection. They create a life like a musician who hits the notes correctly, but his music is lifeless.
Also, this “new” you came with a measuring stick! This was to determine how successful your new persona was operating. It measured your level of acceptance, lovability, and perception of people. This measuring stick compared you to others. It determined how successful you were compared to people your age, people in your career, and other people of your gender. It compared just about every comparison imaginable! No matter your success level, there was always somebody or something ahead of you. Another rung on the ladder to climb. You were never enough.
The goals, demands, and requirements you placed upon yourself never satisfied you. No matter what level of success you experienced, there remained a fear, an unanswered question of your worth, significance, lovability, and value as a person.
The solution was always the same. There was only one choice: do more, work harder, sleep less, or give more. Maybe if you worked a little harder, were a little more successful, and gave a little bit more, you would experience a fulfilled life! Quitting was not an option. You were committed.
But there was an even more cruel twist of irony. Having built a life on serving the needs of others in hopes of proving your own worth, now you had many people who were counting on you. They now needed you. They needed you to be strong. They needed you not to fail; they needed you to have the answers. They needed you to be able to carry them when they were too weak to walk. When you tried to say you needed a break, you needed to care for yourself they demanded that you love them, serve them, care for them, not abandon them. You had promised them you would be there. They now demanded you keep that promise!
You bravely fought. You used every available resource, dug deep, and poured out everything, becoming even more of a shell of a person, if that was possible.…
But it was not enough. You had built a life that literally demanded more than you had to give. But still, you fought on. Your belief in God and that which was good sustained you. You were convinced that because you had served so deeply and given so sacrificially, attempting to be a man of integrity, God would somehow rescue you, proving you were worth it.
Then, today, it happened. The proverbial straw broke the camel's back. You broke physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The personality, the code of ethics, the checklist for success, the serving, putting others first, and the fierce determination to be the best all proved in the end to be powerless to create the person you longed to be.
The realization that all your service, all your giving and caring for the needs of others, had not earned you some special place of honor, the realization that God was not going to “rescue” you crushed you beyond repair.
Devastated, crushed, and disillusioned, you have run out of options. You have used up every source available to you and came up empty. Ruined, everything you worked so hard for is either destroyed or in the process of being destroyed. It’s over, and you know it! There is no recovery from this…
If only you could see from the perspective of eternity. If you understood who you really are, that that crushed person on the floor is not you, but is the false self you built because you did not believe that the real you was sufficient. I wish you could see that the failure of this false self is one of the greatest gifts you will ever experience.
What you don’t know now is you have lived your life under a great spell. You have forgotten who you are. The failure of your false self will eventually cause you to remember the true you and the reason you are alive. You will embark on a quest, an expedition where you will explore the wilderness of your heart.
You’ll discover that your life is a part of a great cosmic story. You will discover that you come from a place of eternity and that you played a role in choosing the life you would live here on earth. Your role in that story was written into the very essence of your heart. The longing to live a meaningful life is a result of a deep knowing that still lives within you.
You will discover that your heart naturally desires that which unlocks your unique design, empowers your dreams, and fulfills your destiny. You will discover that your life is a series of Trail Markers inviting you to remember. Eventually, you will learn how to recognize and read those trail markers and follow them to the discovery of the real you and a life worth living!
Most of all, you will discover, “You are lovable simply because you are alive”!
I know you don’t believe me now. But the day will come when you look back on today with a heart full of gratitude. You will even thank God for not rescuing you but allowing you to walk through the dark night of the soul. You will discover that the real you is everything you’ve ever longed to be! All the struggle, pain, and agony will one day be worth it! The realization that your story is part of others' stories and their journey of remembering will bring you greater joy than you can imagine.
You will remember your childhood dream, move to the Adirondack mountains of New York, and live out that dream. You will one day create Destiny Expeditions, an organization that empowers people to embark on their own personal quest to discover their true value and identity and a life worth living!
The day will come when you discover that everything you fought so hard to earn and prove is already true of your authentic self. But without the struggle, pain, and failure, without the contrast, the heights of joy for which you were destined would never have been realized.
The Cosmic Story…
Although the details differ for each of you reading this letter, we are all part of a Universal Cosmic Story. Ultimately, the purpose of each of our roles in that cosmic story is the same: remembering and helping others remember. We are all on a journey home!
I write in the hopes of awakening a great remembering within the hearts of my sojourners. A voice in the middle of your dream calling you! Calling to you to hear the voice of the Universe, inviting you to discover the realities of life through awakened eyes.
When you awaken, much like Snow White awakening from the spell, Frodo realizing he was chosen, and Neo in the Matrix seeing the light for the first time, you will discover who you are, where you came from, where you are going, and why. When you awaken, you will realize you knew this all along!
Welcome to the journey home. Welcome to The Quest!
Love and blessings, Wayne
Most of all, you will discover, “You are lovable simply because you are alive”!
Thanks for sharing Wayne, a lot to relate here.
Incredible read as always Wayne, reminds me of the words by Henry David Thoreau, "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."