Be Your Own Gift

Posted on April 7, 2012 by Angela Yuriko Smith

 

(Photo borrowed from my Facebook..)

We live in double standard time. Our school kids are told to think outside of the box but not color outside of the lines.

When I was growing up I was the weird reject kid with few friends. I didn’t get along with other kids because we couldn’t understand each other. I thought they were boring. They thought there was something wrong with me.

I suffered my way thru grade and middle school. I made it about a month in High School before I just left. No more mindless brainwashing for me, my rebellious 16-year-old self decided. There was no prom and there won’t ever be any high school reunions but I’ve never missed any of it. In 1986 I was the youngest GED graduate ever in the State of New Hampshire and by 17 I was in college making 4.0 grades. And then I got bored again.

I wound up running away from home and hitchiking all over our nation back in the 80′s. I thumbed my way from Washington State down to Florida and then on up the East coast to settle in Montreal, Quebec for a while. There was a bunch of small trips around the midwest as I bumped my way from Denver and Boulder to Cheyenne. I had such wild adventures… I lived fiction.

So the people I knew growing up were right about me. I was weird and different and I suffered for it. When I no longer let myself be censored by their disapproval I wound up having the time of my life. I lived 5 lifetimes in one youth and I still have a whole lifetime (or two ;p) left to enjoy. Not standing in line let me feel the wind in my hair. Coloring outside the box filled my world with Technicolor.

I’m not advocating that everyone run away and jump in trucks with strangers. That’s quite the opposite. I’m suggesting that all of us be true to ourselves and stop allowing our personalities to be censored by the media, our friends and our parents. You may just want to sit on a porch for a decade and knit with a cat at your feet. That is just as valid as all my hitchiking if it is from you.

Be true to yourself and you’ll unlock the exact person the world needs from you. All the elements of magnificence are there and only you can fill that role. Be your own gift.