We question ourselves

Sometimes we question ourselves. We question our actions, we question our motives, we question our decisions. We wake up in the morning and we cringe- thinking about things we said or did last night or yesterday or last month or last year. We wonder what we were thinking, how we could have been so foolish, how we could have been so carefree and careless.

These moments of self-doubt leave us feeling sick to our stomachs. We have a knot of uncertainty in our gut and we wonder if we can make things right, if we can undo what we did. But the truth is that we can't undo the past and the truth is that we make decisions knowing what we know and what we feel and what we think is right at that time. Looking back and castigating ourselves serves no purpose other than to remind us of our perceived failures.

But maybe that's the key. Maybe those failures aren't so much failures as lessons. And maybe the greatest lesson we can learn is to trust ourselves. We live our lives moment to moment. We can hope and plan for the future but we can't make it get here any faster than it will. We can live in this moment, though. And we can know that, in this moment, we have our best interests at heart. So maybe when we open up and say things or do things that we may regret later on, maybe if we can remember that we did what we did or we said what we said, not out of malice or embarrassment, not out of animosity or anger, but out of a hope that being ourselves and revealing ourselves was meant to share who we are and to bring someone in and to bring someone closer. Most of the time, when we cringe at our actions, it's because we feel over-exposed.

But exposing our humor and our honesty and our delight and our intentions, exposing our feelings and our joy and our happiness can never be wrong. It can never be wrong to be who we are and it can never be wrong to show what we feel and it can never be wrong to be in the moment and live in the moment and revel in the present. It can never be wrong to wear our hearts on our sleeves and take someone by the hand and ask them to share. It can never be wrong to be honest and true. And we should not cringe at our actions that make it so; we should instead be grateful for being able to be so open.

After all, this is the life.
- a

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