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If you want people to stop giving you unsolicited advice, stop behaving as if you need it.
I said that to myself recently after feeling like I was being handed another prescription for a social affliction I don't believe I'm infected with.
I complain a lot about feeling as if people are telling me what they think I should do all the time. It was only recently that I realized why perhaps this seems to happen so frequently. Perhaps it's because I've gotten way too comfortable with my own melancholia. In fact...knowing what I know, and trusting myself as I do...I'm beginning to feel a bit like I'm walking around in a suit I might have worn 100 pounds ago. I look ridiculous, but for some reason, I think it's more comfortable than the new suit I've been revealing layer by painstaking layer for the past three years or so.
My journey over time has been the voyage back to my true self. Uncloaking my beliefs and my wishes and wants and desires and marrying them to the notion that I can indeed create the reality I wish for myself. I can accomplish and complete whatever I choose. I get to pick my story. Problem is, in a world full of know it alls, it can be very easy to slip on the banana peel of someone else's experience. Especially as we age, we are eager to impart our supposed wisdom on the choices of others. Sometimes it's a pearl of wisdom that saves you in the nick of time. Othertimes its a big floppy neon yellow hat that is three sizes too big for your head. It just doesn't fit. The point is not to get too offended. People mean well more often than not.
The way I see it, I have a choice. I can either choose to embrace what I believe and get on with getting there...or I can sit with my back to the future crying over old hurts that I refuse to let scab and fall away. I can tell myself I have no idea what the hell I'm doing and I need someone else to tell me who/what/where I am complete with blueprints and ten step programs, or I can acknowledge that I am not lost. I am not unclear. I am not broken. I can swim like mad, or flail about acting as if I'm going to drown. Perhaps if I did more of the former and a little less of the latter, I'd stop wasting time.
Enough with the shenanigans. I've got somewhere to be. How I get there may not be the way you get there. But then again, your reality ain't necessarily mine. I'm good with that. Here's hoping you are, too.

