There was a child who played all day long. Her games were simple. The worst time of the day was when she had to come in because it was getting dark! This child was you, was me. When we are children, we do what we want to do, we follow our gut. We love life and others. We stay away from unpleasant people and seek the company of those who like the same things we do. We don’t waste time criticizing our appearance in front of the mirror. We put our clothes on and go outside to play. We feel good about ourselves. We love life. We let our heart guide us. We don’t worry about what others think.
Why are we so worried today about what other people think about us? Where does this come from? Is it a fear of not being loved, accepted? We all have need love, tenderness and compassion. That’s what makes us human. That’s what makes us beautiful. And that’s what we have forgotten: that we are beautiful. That we deserve our own love. Over time, we started to believe what other people told us – criticism borne out of jealousy, envy, no matter. We gradually forgot who we really are. We stopped loving ourselves. It happened unconsciously, slowly. We believed these meaningless words spoken by unhappy, suffering people who also believed what others told them.
Well-being is our natural state. We lost it along the way because we started to let our mind guide us instead of our heart. We slowly left ourselves behind. We let the opinions of others, of society, take over, and abandoned our well-being, our love of life. We abandoned ourselves. We don’t love ourselves anymore, we criticize ourselves. We turn outward to fill the void we feel inside. We spend more and more, but the fleeting pleasure that comes with material things will never fill that void.
We need to change course and turn inward. We need to lift the artificial veil society has drawn over us and rediscover our beauty. That beauty is the child within us. She is still there and will always be. She knows what she needs, she knows how to enjoy life, she knows what she loves and she loves life. She doesn’t let others’ opinions guide her, she lets her heart guide her.
Listen to your heart and it will lead you towards the friendships, the job, the activities, the choices and the life that fills you with joy.
– Sylvie Grégoire