In my house of Self, I have a Shadow.

In my house of Self, I have a shadow. An incessant voice that is never satisfied, it has me run around for the keys to my happiness, my self-worth, and quite mischievously, my worthiness of love and forgiveness, everywhere except the place I lost them. So I stand at the entrance of my Home, staring at the closed door of my own unconditional love, the door to my authentic self, irritated, and weary from all the energy spent going nowhere but the place I started. In front of THIS door. So I look for my keys in the eyes of others, my friends, perhaps a significant other, in the validation of strangers or my boss, a panel of glaring judges, or even a bank account.

We’ve all had a guest like that over in our own mind, you know the type. The type of guest that has overstayed their welcome. We try to get rid of them, leave them playing in the background, but it seems the harder we push, the stronger they get, and the more we ignore them, the more our fears benefit from the anonymity of being shrouded by the unknown. Because the moment I give it some serious attention, try to fight it, I’ve already conceded that my shadow, might just have a point. Whatever doubt or fear it chose today, might be true enough to me that I feel I have to spend energy and time proving it otherwise, rather than being satisfied with the answer “you know what, not today homie, I think I am worthy of love, but thanks for looking out!”

While we search for ourselves everywhere except inside of ourselves, we tend to build a wall between us and the experience calling on us to live it. Whether that’s on a date, or a final exam, if we’re too busy looking for our worth on the face of those blank sheets of paper, odds are, we’re going to be too busy fighting ourselves that we fail to give our partners or the exam our undivided attention. When we attach ourselves to the outcomes of situations or the opinions of others, our attachments end up disconnecting us from the challenge or person sitting across from us. Like losing our cool over how a date’s going that we end up ignoring the fact that the date hasn’t stopped going, or missing the game basket because of that pestering doubt which seemed to have forgotten that the buzzer hasn’t stopped clicking.

And yet this shadow, does so much more than instill doubt and fear in us on dates when things are… well.. scary! Where it really goes to town, is in the midst of that insufferable silence in times of peace. When boredom raises its heavy winds, and loneliness strikes its thundering bell, when the quiet seems a bit too eary. When there’s nothing outside of us to point to, this shadow points to itself. Like a survival mechanism that continues to call on us to survive when all we really want to do is start living.