Realizing Adulthood in Journal

is simply taking an honest look. A really honest look.
Look into all the places you were scared to look as a child. Into the dark corner of your bedroom. At the inky dark space made by the closet door just ajar. Snatch the sheet off the ghost that haunted your bedroom- only to find a vacuum cleaner leaning askew in a shadowy nook.
And it’s taking a look at what you’re really afraid of.
I always get anxious and flustered when speaking to a group; any group. I can look at that and I know it’s because I’m really just terrified of being rejected. Of being ostracized. Of being laughed at and dismissed. But I’m terrified of those things because I have a need for acceptance and love and grace that wasn’t fulfilled.
I only know this after having taken an honest look. And now that I know that, I can easily fulfill those needs for myself. It’s a basic acceptance of responsibility for my own character flaws; and a will to try to put them right.
You first have to love yourself before you can love anyone else. I think that is fundamentally true. Love isn’t a feeling; it’s action. It’s many behaviors and actions and thoughts and spoken words iterated over time to culminate in a story. A life. A person incapable or unwilling to love themselves, ie, incapable or unwilling to put their own flaws straight in the best way they know how, cannot yet conceive of the actions necessary to love another flawed human being.
And it is trial and error. Perhaps somewhat easier or more difficult than expected; but the solution is usually a surprise. A surprise I think because.. well, if you’d known the solution, you would have done it.
And it’s very… counterintuitive. That word is actually kind of funny to me. Like an oxymoron. Intuition is like the counter to abstract thought. So, rational thought is counterintuitive. They balance each other out. So rather, it’s counter-rational.
Finding a solution, for me anyways, has always been an unconscious process. I believe it is for everyone, but I seem to have more awareness of it. Speaking from the psychological sciences, your subconscious makes a decision, and your rational consciousness merely becomes aware of that decision. People who think the are rational merely have not taken an honest look; they have not grown out of childhood yet. Your unconscious beliefs structure your world. Your intrinsic value system is your perception.

In all reality, it is simply quite amazing that human beings have developed in the way that we did. It is as if principles were pining for recognition; they needed a mode of expression and realization in the world. This is just a simple analogy of course. Principles exist whether we recognize them or not. However, the fact that human beings do recognize principles gives a certain credibility to their absolute character.