Fluffy, Grey Particles

Rani Pani, Nepal

Over the past 5 years, my definition of “service” has been challenged. It’s been challenged from each spiritual, emotional, and physical aspect of my life. It has been a constant, inspiring cycle of realizing what it means to serve one self and others. From a young age, we are taught that giving back is good. We should have respect for ourselves and others. We should be kind and we should be grateful for what we have. We are taught all of the things that take us so long as humans to truly comprehend and integrate in our lives. I think we are often so blinded by circumstances or our own demons that we forget to be authentic, kind and loving to the most important person of all- ourselves.

It’s often difficult, like an invisible force pulling us in one direction and not the other. We don’t realize for how long and which times we were being mean and hurtful to our soul. It’s like we let ourselves become blinded by so many forces that we didn’t realize the energy and strength that was hiding underneath all of the layers of insecurities and desires.

I was being unkind to myself for a long time. It took me a long time to figure it out, to understand the causes and the effects it was having on my life. To truly understand how my decisions actually felt wrong although I had forced myself to feel they were right.

Although I have come to this realization, it has been an ongoing process of trying to be kinder to myself day after day. It’s almost like each day is a shedding process, slowly relieving myself of the fluffy, grey particles. Sometimes we pick more up as we go, but there’s always a few more that we shed. We learn to take routes where we won’t pick up some more, but some are unavoidable.

As always, we learn from each one of these fluffy, grey particles we pick up and become a little wiser each time we let one go.