Chicken Soup for the Soul 20th Anniversary Edition (17 page)

What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly.

~Carl Rogers

T
he following was written in answer to a 15-year-old girl’s question, “How can I prepare myself for a fulfilling life?”

I am me.

In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me.

There are people who have some parts like me but no one adds up exactly like me. Therefore, everything that comes out of me is authentically mine because I alone choose it.

I own everything about me — my body, including everything it does; my mind, including all my thoughts and ideas; my eyes, including the images of all they behold; my feelings, whatever they might be — anger, joy, frustration, love, disappointment, excitement; my mouth and all the words that come out of it — polite, sweet and rough, correct or incorrect; my voice, loud and soft; all my actions, whether they be to others or myself.

I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears.

I own all 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 me in all my parts. I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests.

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 the solutions to the puzzles and for 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 me. This is authentic and represents where I am at that moment in time.

When I review later how I looked and sounded, what I said and did, and how I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting. I can discard that which is unfitting and keep that which proved fitting, 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, 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

The willingness to share does not make one charitable; it makes one free.

~Robert Brault

S
he used to sleep in the Fifth Street Post Office. I could smell her before I rounded the entrance to where she slept, standing up, by the public phones. I smelled the urine that seeped through the layers of her dirty clothing and the decay from her nearly toothless mouth. If she was not asleep, she mumbled incoherently.

Now they close the post office at six to keep the homeless out, so she curls up on the sidewalk, talking to herself, her mouth flapping open as though unhinged, her smells diminished by the soft breeze.

One Thanksgiving we had so much food left over, I packed it up, excused myself from the others and drove over to Fifth Street.

It was a frigid night. Leaves were swirling around the streets and hardly anyone was out, all but a few of the luckless in some warm home or shelter. But I knew I would find her.

She was dressed as she always was, even in summer: The warm woolly layers concealing her old, bent body. Her bony hands clutched the precious shopping cart. She was squatting against a wire fence in front of the playground next to the post office. “Why didn’t she choose some place more protected from the wind?” I thought, and assumed she was so crazy she did not have the sense to huddle in a doorway.

I pulled my shiny car to the curb, rolled down the window and said, “Mother... would you...” and was shocked at the word

“Mother.” But she was... is... in some way I cannot grasp.

I said, again, “Mother, I’ve brought you some food. Would you like some turkey and stuffing and apple pie?” At this the old woman looked at me and said quite clearly and distinctly, her two loose lower teeth wobbling as she spoke, “Oh, thank you very much, but I’m quite full now. Why don’t you take it to someone who really needs it?” Her words were clear, her manners gracious. Then I was dismissed: Her head sank into her rags again.

~Bobbie Probstein

The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs.

~Joan Didion

the game we play

is let’s pretend

and pretend

we’re not

pretending

we choose to

forget

who we are

and then forget

that we’ve

forgotten

who are we really?

the center

that watches

and runs the show

that can choose

which way

it will go

the I AM

consciousness

that powerful

loving perfect

reflection

of the cosmos

but in our attempt

to cope with

early situations

we chose or were

hypnotized into

a passive position

to avoid

punishment

or the loss of love

we chose to deny

our

response/ability

pretending that

things just

happened

or that we were

being controlled

taken over

we put ourselves down

and have become

used to this

masochistic

posture

this weakness

this indecisiveness

but we are

in reality

free

a center

of cosmic energy

your will

is your power

don’t pretend

you don’t have it

or you won’t

~Bernard Gunther

Every human being is a problem in search of a solution.

~Ashley Montagu

1.
You will receive a body.

You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period of this time around.

2.
You will learn lessons.

You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called Life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.

3.
There are no mistakes, only lessons.

Growth is a process of trial and error: Experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works.”

4.
A lesson is repeated until learned.

A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.

5.
Learning lessons does not end.

There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6.
“There” is no better than “here.”

When your “there” has become a “here,” you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”

7.
Others are merely mirrors of you.

You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.

8.
What you make of your life is up to you.

You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9.
Your answers lie inside you.

The answers to Life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.

10.
You will forget all this.

~Chérie Carter-Scott