Love Letter to the Pressured

To live according to the expectations and dictates of others when you are no longer a child is a ridiculous amount of pressure for anyone.

Just live.

Why hold yourself hostage to the accomplishments and caprice of others?

The Mango tree, planted in its season, will have its fruit at the appointed time. It doesn’t look at what the other trees of its kind are doing.

It simply continues to grow.

With each turn of the year, its bark and branches become thicker, developing greater strength. All of this to carry the weight of its future harvest. Though that prospective yield is unknown, the tree prepares for all possibilities.

Why?

Because it has prepared itself to expect the unexpected.

When we live by the stringent and at times dogmatic expectations others have of the manner in which we should lead our own lives, we can end up stunting our own growth, and retarding our journey to where life calls us.

Let’s imagine for a moment that little girl who’s been dancing since she practically came forth from the womb. She grows up and decides to become a prima ballerina. Lacking the initial training, she is given critique after critique, and is advised to turn in her ballet slippers. She’s told her “hobbie” won’t pay the bills and that “wasting time on such a frivolous pursuit” will only end in hopelessness and heartbreak. She is expected to “live responsibly, go to college, marry and find a career that pays.”

If this once dream-filled, passionate woman allows the naysayers - and those with expectations of what she should do with her own life - to get to her, she will end up on a path out of alignment with her intrinsic identity.

Preprogrammed life patterns make no room for personal paths and can be burdensome to those who are prone to comparing their lives to others. I do not say that this is you. However, if you feel pressured to follow some prescribed path that every Tom, Dick, Harry, Rebecca and Katie have gone down, never actually fulfilling your Yah-given purpose on this earth, don’t be. Don’t you think that sort of life is sad? It is especially so if you start comparing where you are to where you “should be” according to the world’s diagnosis of a proper life path timeline.

March to the beat of your own internal drum. The one found in Yahuah, Who is in you.

Release whatever expectations have entrapped you on a path you never desired, but only settled for, and forge the path that manifests from within, the one surging forth from your heart, begging to be followed once more.

You heard it said that comparison is the thief of joy. Well I posit that expectation is the snuffer. It snuffs out the very spark of light, of passion, that makes you, you; leaving in its wake the pallid remains of fading dreams of the original soul that’s been left behind.

A soul that’s been replaced by who exactly?

Who are you?

Better yet whose are you? And why are you following the current life path you are on?

Seriously, ask yourself why.

If the answer lies outside of you, then you should reevaluate that path.

“But now, this is what Yahuah says— who created you, Yahcov, he who formed you, Yashar’el: ‘Do not fear, because I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are Mine.’” Isaiah 43:1