my deepest, darkest insecurities: pt. 2
- Tunji Williams
- May 11, 2021
- 2 min read
ah, so where did we leave off? that's right, i'm most afraid of these things in life:
not being liked and accepted
not doing enough to succeed the way i envision for myself in life
how random and close life and death seem sometimes.
not being smart/experienced/old/resilient/white/conservative enough to achieve my professional goals.
missing the meaning of my life focusing on the wrong things.
the funny thing about life is how much, and how quickly, it changes. i can't say today that i have the same set of 5 "deepest and darkest" insecurities/fears. it's so interesting how the human mind can at once be reliably fickle and incomparably resilient. The qualities might actually reflect two sides of the same coin.
in any event, while i'm proud of the earnestness of my original post, i think upon reflection, i find the whole exercise a bit futile. the way i see it at the moment, fears and anxieties are a fact of life. they are manifestations of the stories we tell ourselves about the past and the future, fueled by our fears and hopes about the same. And these stories battle for space in our minds - interacting daily with, and shaping, our lived experiences. our core power is in understanding that, and being aware of it. what I CAN do is constantly reassess and reframe the stories i tell myself (sifting fiction from truth, and dogma from fact). what I CAN do is design my life (habits and practices) in ways that promote and center my constructive stories and empower me to manage the uncertainty and change that life invariably brings.
i set out to deconstruct my problems and engineer elegant solutions. turns out, life is not a problem to be solved. there are no discrete solutions. my best bet is to continue to tinker with my perspective daily in a search for peace, balance, understanding and God's love on earth. and in that, i think, there is freedom from the kind of existential fear i was describing in my original post. that's where i am with it...
term of the day: Goodwill Industries. they generate $6 BILLION in revenue annually. i thought that was so interesting. it makes me very hopeful about the impact we can have with the BuyNothing App, especially considering that with the app we aren't bound by the same constraints as a brick and mortar operation like Goodwill's.
song of the day: Sweet Sticky Thing by The Ohio Players. what do ya'll know about this? Thanks, Dad!
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