Own It

"...you own your dreams and your future."

A very dear friend of mine said this to me in one of our many e-mail correspondence. Sometimes I'll receive a compliment that sticks a lump in my throat and fills me with a great sense of gratitude for the person who says it.

When a compliment is truly genuine it stays with me. I've commented on it before and probably will again. There is so much to be said for genuine appreciation. Anyone can say, "Good Job" or "You're cool" but it takes a certain level of awareness, trust and observation for someone to deliver a compliment that not only has meaning, but a lasting effect.

It's an unfourtunate side-effect of our world that so many people lack self-respect, dignity and self-knowledge. One can argue that those who pursue their dreams are feeding their ego or being selfish. But it's the difference between pride as a result of hard work and satisfaction and pride at bettering yourself by belittling someone else.

There's a strange idea that there's not enough happiness to go around. That happiness is somehow finite and if someone else has it you can blame them for not feeling happy yourself.

This entire concept seems ridiculous to me now but it was one I wholeheartedly believed for some time. In that time I don't think I got a lot of compliments that I believed were genuine. Certainly a lot of people told me that the work I was doing or how I performed at a job was satisfactory, but I couldn't accept them with grace. This was because they were delivered by people who didn't know me through no fault of their own.

I didn't know who I was so I couldn't have possibly shared that with the world. I didn't know because I didn't own anything. I let life happen to me instead of making life happen. It wasn't something I'd always done, but it's something I'll never do again.

So when someone acknowledges that ownership...when someone I admire through and through can say that they see something I love about myself, it feels good. As it should.

Funny. I was going to write an entry about business cards and how important they are. Another thing about knowing yourself though is knowing what's important, going with the flow, and accepting change.

Such is life.