Letters to Myself: Words or Wisdom

You’ll never be happy if you keep comparing yourself to others.

I know that you know that. But it’s so hard to live, isn’t it? It’s so hard to escape from the mindset that being different equals inadequacy, that not doing what the world says you should do means you are wrong and misguided.

Stop listening to the voices. Stop listening to the pressures that speak in the night, the ones that tell you that you are not enough, that you are a failure who has chosen poorly. You are forging your own path. No one else can come there with you, because they are not you. But there is a reason, a reason for every step. Please believe me.

Sometimes you wish you could blend a little easier. Often you want the things you must wait for. But no two stories are the same. Our lives are all like interlocking circles: though they overlap and we meet each other in the middle, we are all on separate orbits, experiencing life’s moments at different stages.

You should never lament over uniqueness. It is a quality everyone possesses, but one so many hide out of fear or uncertainty. People won’t always recognize it. They may praise those who wear thinly veiled disguises, and leave you feeling alone and invisible and misunderstood when your heart is exposed on your sleeve.

But it doesn’t matter who notices and who sees. No one is ever truly understood by anyone except God, and He sees everything. Isn’t there comfort in that? Though earthly praise fades like a worthless gem, your value will never run out. No one else could ever do a better job of being you, and thankfully that is all you are called to be.

So embrace it. Embrace the trail that you are taking. Be grateful for the twists and turns and don’t despair when no one follows you around them. Rest assured that they are leading you somewhere you will be glad to go. You can only see as far as the eye can strain and no further, but isn’t that the beauty of life? You have to take it one step at a time. One footstep leads to another and storms always clear into calm.

I could tell you so much more: how you are special and beautiful and don’t need to try to be anything you’re not. I could say so many things, but they mean nothing unless you believe them, unless you let them seep under your skin. None of this will mean anything until you believe it, until you learn to accept the things that seem too good to be true, to trust in what you cannot see on the world’s outer surface.

Until then, these are just words.

It’s up to you to make them wisdom.