"Reflection"

I think "reflection" should be an easy post for me, but I've been fighting it.  Maybe there are too many other things in my mind, or because I already did a post for "mirror" here.  I've decided to just repost that art instead of fighting the art plus the words.  I wish I'd painted it on something better than bond paper since it's kind of wrinkly.

I guess my struggle with this post is that I feel like venting about multiple people, but that goes against my general goal of keeping things pleasant here.  Do you really want to read my bitching about people you don't know?  I didn't think so, and I don't want to see a bitchy post in my records a year from now.  It's hard to write a post that reflects my higher nature while my baser self speaks loudest in my mind.

When I’m operating at my best, people around me reflect my optimism, energy, and enthusiasm.  When I’m at my worst, people are unwilling, angry, and stubborn.  It’s a big responsibility to be so powerful.  We’re all that powerful.  We all effect the people around us, and we're all effected by them.  I often think we're not much different than a hive of bees.  People just have wars instead of swarms, and often with less reason.

I had a girlfriend that brought out my best.  We danced, laughed, had in-depth conversations, and encouraged each other's creativity.  I felt more alive when we were together.  I thought it was all her because I wasn't like that without her.  She surprised me when she said she wasn't like that without me.  She moved to California and I felt like she took the best part of me with her.

We're lucky when we find someone like that in our lives, but somehow we've got to find those parts of ourselves with or without seeing our potentials reflected by someone else.  It's harder to do by ourselves sometimes, and worse yet when someone only brings out our worst.

We're all made of light and dark.  We all have the capacity to better the world or destroy it.  It can be in small ways or large.  I watched people watching my friend dancing and saw the smiles on their faces.  It wasn't just that my friend was pretty and sexy.  People shared her joy.  That's a gift.

I want to feel joy, and want to share it with others.  I want people to feel better because I spent time with them.  That gets so much harder to do when I'm feeling dragged down by other people's negativities and stupidities.  My self-reflection gets bogged down by it and I forget about striving for my best.  I've been escaping life every evening in Robin Hobb books (which I recommend if you like the fantasy genre).

Sometimes I have to weed out some of the people in my life.  It's painful because I'm loyal to a fault, even when that loyalty is detrimental.  Those losses give me time for people who are more supportive.  Sometimes I don't know whether to fix relationships or abandon them.  I suppose it all comes down to what we see about ourselves reflected in their eyes?

.