When I look around at what the beauty industry has done to beauty, it makes me want to throw in the towel. Wanting to be beautiful is suddenly collapsed with all this nasty vigilance and self-violence, comparison and endless inadequacy.
But when I approach beauty as something I get to express rather than an ideal to attain, it frees up a lot of energy, I feel far more loving and playful.
When I look around at how success is presented in media and valued by our culture, it makes me want to throw in the towel. Wanting to be successful appears to come with petty competition, accumulation of shit we don’t need and a total imbalance of the values that actually nourish us as human beings.
But when I approach success as something I get to express, the sharing of my gifts, talents and what I’m most called to give my energy to, rather than attaining an ideal with an external badge, status symbol or an accumulation of zeros, it frees up a lot of energy, I feel more clarity of purpose.
Our world is so noisy now. There are endless distractions or shiny objects vying for our attention. It’s no wonder that it’s more habitual to look outward at where we’re supposed to go, who we’re supposed to be, and at what we’re supposed to accomplish or possess. It’s rather automatic to compare ourselves to these external constructs, to believe that this is where we’ll find the path we’re meant to walk down.
But living as an expression calls us to go inward, to find that world that is so vast, honest and clear, one that needn’t be searched for because it’s already there, waiting to be drawn upon and brought outward. When we live in this way, our attachments to where we end up begin to dissolve and, with much greater ease than striving toward something that is not ours, more becomes possible.