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I am Me
In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it — I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know — but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me. However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay.
— Virginia Satir
Celebrate and revel in your uniqueness and share it with the world. You have been blessed with gifts and you and only you can share them with the world.
Since elementary school, I have had an intense fascination with the word melancholy. I had two favorite words then, “lucrative” and “melancholy.” In hindsight, “lucrative” was future economic wealth to a child from a single-parent home with a mother working furiously to raise, clothe and feed 4. “Melancholy,” however, was then and is now, enticing by its own right–at least to me. It is a beautiful word and I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I ached to use it in a sentence but my 10 year old attempts were always feeble, even to me.
Mel´an`chol`y
n. 1.
1. Depression of spirits; a gloomy state continuing a considerable time; deep dejection; gloominess.
2. Great and continued depression of spirits, amounting to mental unsoundness; melancholia.
3. Pensive maditation[sic]; serious thoughtfulness.
4. Ill nature.
a. 1. Depressed in spirits; dejected; gloomy dismal.
2. Producing great evil and grief; causing dejection; calamitous; afflictive; as, a melancholy event.
3. Somewhat deranged in mind; having the judgement impaired.
4. Favorable to meditation; somber.
There is a devious sadness to the world in which we live – a sadness that comes to find us in the night, when we’re all alone under the canopy of a million stars. Something within us knows that we ought to be better – that our love ought to burn brighter and shine more fiercely – that our passion and conviction for life ought to be strong, and lead us through that nagging temptation to settle for the ordinary and mundane. Something within us knows that life was always meant to be lived to the full. And this something, when it comes to find us, convicts us of all the cheap and common things we often settle for. This feeling, in my mind, is the definition of melancholy.