“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”
-Marianne Williamson
I first heard this quote as a teenager, fighting my way through the early stages of an onset of a depression that I would spend more than 20 years fighting.
I’d just performed in front of a packed house at a poetry spot in Chicago when the host pulled me to the side and asked me why I wasn’t doing art as a full-time endeavor. I told him that it was a dream of mine but I had far too many obstacles that I needed to overcome and I didn’t have any help getting my foot in the door.
He told me something that I’ve never forgotten, but that I don’t remember often enough, “See, talent like yours doesn’t need help getting through any door. When you decide to go wherever you want to go, you’ll be able to. Trust me. Nothing can stop you.” Then he quoted Marianne Williamson and told me that I was afraid of how big of a success that I was going to be. He said that he could see that I didn’t belong with the “crowd” I had myself in. He said, “You are here for them, they are here with you”. Took me a long time to understand that part.
I have always remembered those words. I just don’t remind myself often enough that I believe them to be true.
Because I had allowed an idea and fear that success and money, fame and fortune, celebrity and access to that other lifestyle, would force me to surrender my core principles and values. I’d bought into the notion that money changes you, that being famous distorts your character, and that I’d have to leave or let go of the people and past that I hold closest to my heart. Crazy thing is that most of the people that I feared losing and cared the most about, I didn’t have much of a relationship or communication with anyway. Yet I’ve held myself hostage to this idea that I dare not go off and become a successful that would separate me from them more than I am now. Because I’ve always held myself responsible for the failure of any and every thing that has gone “wrong” in my life. Everything. I’ve always found some way to blame myself.
As time passed and that depression lingered, leaving its mark on my mind, my body, and ultimately my living, I veered further away from those words. And life, as life does, just kept life’ng. Before you knew it, so many suns and moons had passed by. Years, decades. A life’s worth of time to get through to the point that I am at now. Ready.
The realization today is that nothing changes YOU, if YOU change nothing.
YOUR own fears have stopped far more of YOUR dreams than anyone’s faith in YOUR failure could ever. Because no one can stop the determined YOU! Nothing is impossible for a destined YOU. Not one question can undermine a defined YOU!
And the YOU that YOU know YOU are, that YOU will always be there. That YOU will always win out; over every obstacle, every distraction, every detour, every devil, every disappointment, any and every difference that could possibly attempt to drive YOU away from where YOU want to go, are going, and where YOU will be, once YOU decide to be there.
That’s what YOU have been afraid of, knowing that YOU are exactly who YOU see YOURSELF as. The endurer. The overcomer. The successful. The winner. The victor. The champion. The leader. The teacher. The example. The one.
It’s time to do it. To be it. To know it.
Just be YOU, and YOU will be just fine.
-see
©️2023 Cornelious “See” Flowers
@seethepoet
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