Romanticize.

The standards that once sufficed as a remedy for a deeper problem, a missed attempt to resolve, no longer enough. A “higher” standard, a “better” person, more resolve, more passion, essentially all driven by more will. Our will? The same will that led us here, this place of necessary resolve, a recognition of a fault that needs altered to avoid further consequences imposed by ourselves?

If WILL could get us there, then why, again, are we here? Why must we even have to state a claim of needing to change any external part, if the internal desire and will to change was enough? Why must me make this bold claim of change, when in actuality, we change nothing at all. We presume that the next time we want something, we will say no, we will reject that desire with such a will and determination to alter ourselves, that the formerly problematic desire will cower to our wills, run away crying at our demanding self. We demand change, we will it.

Yet, here we are, another year, a few weeks in, and the time stamp of our demanded change, the romanticized, commercialized resolve that we felt so good in initially, now being realized for the difficulty a change demands. We took the beautiful picture of someone else’s changing and made it our own. We wanted to be “that” person, the one who did it on the commercial. The one who took a problem, the music played in the background, a picture was showed of the “old” self and “wow” look at me now. We wanted that romantic story to be ours, so we did what man does best and “determine” success.

As hard as we try, we can not merely WILL our way to success, rather, I believe, must understand
more of ourselves and reach out to find value in things we missed before, things we minimized. 

Again, the determination was authentic at the time of development. As much determination as I have when I need light so I flip a switch. I am not willing to reestablish a wire connection to an external power source, develop a light bulb and find a way to harness the power to establish light. After all, I bet the people in medieval times would have loved controlled light, but their resolve to see was not enough to WILL electricity.

We cannot will that which we do not yet know. We cannot take someone else’s concluded story and make it ours. We cannot simply choose the path, assume all the bumps in the road and give ourselves the “pass” we tend to do when things get too tough. We must actually have a change in values, an alteration for something higher on the inside. A goal of weight loss is not sufficient, for it is too superficial and a mere shallow representation of a deeper resolve the desired has to change within themselves.

This depiction and its assumed intimacies may be our own desire to see a met agenda
therefore setting an unrealistic standard of what we again, assume, should be our reality. 

People do not truly want this mere external coat of paint, but desire a change from within. To be like the version of themselves they think they can be, think we should be maybe. We tend to think that by changing this one quality, that we can be those other people, though, the “other” people we see are merely presenting and therefore we do not really know what they are going through, what they have changed to get where they are, or if they even changed at all?

A competition with former self sounds noble, though this can bring about the worst when it comes to beating your “old” being and discounting that person as something less of value, like the step-child worth getting away from as soon as possible. Why must we reject that old self rather than build on the strengths they provided. Why can we not see what we are good at, use it, build on it, and be more efficient versions?

This is not the romantic, glory change we all want, but it is the change we need to be versions of ourselves that depict these changes. Merely “changing” isn’t a change at all, not as much as is seeing the parts to use in other ways than we were to get where we ultimately belong.

The questioning of self, seeing the motive behind the desire, these things are not what led any other version of a romanticized self to success as it was portrayed. There was a change, a deeper shift of values, a shift where the strengths one has were used more efficiently for something that person believes in and will follow-through on. For we never perform these 180 degrees turns to become a “different person.” We alter things slightly, but we are all made differently for a reason. We all have gifts, perspectives and histories nobody else has seen yet, so why must we choose to be like a commercialized version, or an alternate version of ourselves when we were made from all that is Good, thus being descendants of this Good ourselves?

For my own depiction of a road lost and gifts used to make a change for something I valued, Click

HERE.