Entertainment

“If you knew what I was really like you would not like me.”  Well, I know what I am really like and have had to learn to like me.
More and more I am learning to like myself.  It has taken a while.  I am so good at beating up on myself and not meeting the standards I set for myself.  Yet I am seeing that is so counterproductive.
I can never reach what I aspire to if I am constantly berating myself for not meeting a standard.  Something I am asking myself a lot is, who set the standard anyway?  So often it is a perceived standard I need to meet.
I used to keep a list of things I wanted to do and things I wanted to keep from doing.  I gave up on that.  So regularly the things I did not want to do I did, and what I wanted to do I did not do.
My faith has changed my thinking.  I figured if he accepted me warts and all and said I did not need to be perfect before he could do anything with me, then I needed to see myself like that.  That has freed me up no end.
I do not set out to blow it, but when I do it is not the end of the story.  Some things take time.  In the meantime, I just do what I can and leave the things that are biggies in my mind to someone else.  I am actually seeing things happen in unexpected places, and it is enough to reassure me that if those things are being worked out, then the things I saw as priorities would be worked out too.
It is weird but so often big events I see as negatives really help get my priorities straight.  It is a pity to me it is that way.  And I do not think it needs to be.  But I can be stubborn.  So often I will work at making things work for me, but they do not work.  Often something out of left field upsets the plans of mice and men.
It is one of the reasons I think our society is going down the tube.  There is nothing like adversity in my mind to cause me to realize what really matters.  To my mind we have had it so good for so long we are going down kicking and screaming.  Failing to realize that while what we have done is good, it can all be overturned in an instant.
That is why it is important to me, to establish what matters first.  Then no matter what happens I am not left at a loose end.  It all fits in an unflawed framework.  Maybe that is heart on sleeve stuff, but I do not want the sound of my entertaining myself to drown out the sound of what matters most.