Beautiful Soul... Shallow World

I’m not stupid. I know we live in a shallow, vain, subjective world.  We exist in a society that judges us based on our outer appearance, because most often that’s all we can see.  Image is everything.  We are presented an image by everyone we meet, and we present an image to everyone that crosses our path. I have a mask I wear depending on the situation and circumstances.  When I go to apply for a job, I want to present myself as qualified, acceptable, and capable of fulfilling the requirements of that position, so I dress the part and put on the appropriate mask.  When I am running a 5k, I don’t show up in heels and sporting a tiara, although that might be a hilarious run. While I maintain the true essence of my personality at work or play, I choose the image I want to portray.  I post pictures of what is important to me. I don’t post pictures of what I don’t think portrays the right image.  But we are so much more than the masks we wear or the images we choose to display. Yet, how often do we hurt each other because our small minds can’t move beyond the shallow, the vain, the image, or the mask?

Having two handicapped parents taught me at a very early age to see beyond the outward appearance, deeper than the disease, the defects, the imperfections to realize there’s a soul behind the eyes.  My father wasn’t just a blind man.  He was a human being; often times, a terrible, hateful, angry and evil human being, but human nonetheless.  My mother behind her MS was also a human being.  She was someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s wife, someone’s mother, not just a woman whose body didn’t work anymore.  I can remember as a child holding my father’s glass eye in my hand and resenting it, because that seemed to be all the world could see, how they defined him, how they felt sorry for him and placated to his dysfunction, and he preyed on it, used it to cover his sins, to hide the black soul he carried. I hated the world because they couldn’t see him; all they saw was a blind man. I saw a devil. I saw the anger, the hate, the pervert, the conman, the hustler. The world pitied him, made excuses for him, but I saw his soul.  Behind my mother I saw a broken spirit, a dull soul that was gray it allowed her to turn a blind eye, sewed her mouth shut, and too weak to protect her children.  I learned to see souls very early in life.

Now, as a single woman in a vain world, every day I see the masks, wear the masks, and recognize the masks for what they are.  I am inundated with comments on my appearance, and they’re nice to receive. Who doesn’t want to be told they’re pretty, or their eyes are pretty, or their smile is pretty? It’s better than being told you’re hideous or dull.  But, can’t they see ME?  Do they know how strong I am, what I’ve accomplished in my life? How my soul that had been so damaged and abused has survived, thrived, and overcome in spite of the circumstances, the tragedies, and the hate?  Can’t they see the abundance of love, compassion, and hope that radiates from this broken vessel?  

I try so hard to see behind people’s masks when I meet them, get to know the human soul inside them, and decide if I want them in my life. There are MANY, many people I meet that I immediately close out and throw up a wall, defending myself, and keeping them out of my life, out of my company, out of my circle because I see glimpse the devil behind their masks. I don’t listen to what people say. I watch what people do, see how they treat others, take a glance at the trail behind them to see if their path is filled with destruction or love, and listen to my gut. The worst ones often have the sweetest words, prettiest faces, most beautiful bodies, and crocodile tears. They are often damsels in distress or victims of circumstances, but in reality they’re a black plague, the ones causing the strife and drama everywhere they go.  I don’t have time for all that.  But, I can also see sometimes an imperfect mask, a dysfunctional life, a broken appearance, but inside…. I have glimpse some souls so beautiful, so radiant, so amazing that I sometimes can’t hold back the emotion that wells inside me.  They’re often broken, a mess, judged by the world around them – but I see them, I see beyond who they even think they are and see them for who they have the potential to become, what they’re capable to achieve – not because of their looks, their education, their money, their status, their means… but because I know what kind of fight a survivor has, what kind of imagination stirs within a dreamer, what kind of drive resides inside an innovator, a strategist, a clever mind.  I know the power of compassion.  I know the strength of love.  

Fuck their world and their vanity. Fuck the shallow people who can love someone because of their imperfections.  I LOVE perfect imperfections. I LOVE scars and the stories behind them.  I LOVE watching people pick themselves up from the mistakes they’ve made.  I LOVE seeing souls radiate – they’re beautiful. 

I woke up this morning feeling beautiful and sexy.  I may not have my 20-year old body anymore (it’s now full of scars, marks, imperfections, jiggly thighs, and trace evidence of a life lived, mistakes made, and miracles), but the beautiful soul pulsating just beneath my skin is absolutely radiant. If anyone can’t see that when they look at me, they’re a blind idiot and don’t deserve to be in the same universe.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

Budgeting... Heart, Mind and Soul

We’ve talked about the importance of budgeting our time, our goals, and our resources.  Now, I need to get to the core of our being, because no matter what we decide to do on the outside, we have to have balance in our core.  I’m talking about budgeting our hearts, minds and souls. 

What exactly is a budget?  A budget is as system itemizing something we have, want, or need, and breaking it down into increments of debits and credits, incoming and outgoing, supply and demand, etc.  It’s assessing what we have and developing a system to gain what we need.  If we don’t make an honest assessment, we can make erroneous decisions that will cause us to over-budget or under-budget and fail. To reach success, we have to clearly see the path to that success, and then be faithful and committed to the budget we set to reach that desired success.  We could get lucky, but luck always runs out. We’ve got to take control of our life, our choices, and our successes and failures.

Other resources we often overlook when we make a budget for our lives are those intangible resources, but happen to be the most essential in our success or failures of all other budgets.  Just as important as budgeting our money, we have to budget our heart, our mind and our souls.  We can over-extend ourselves, or under-utilize our potential by ignoring these resources.  These are essentially that define who we are – the core of being a human. These are the elements that directly lead to our successes and failures, our happiness or depression, or our love or indifference. 

Heart – We have to budget our hearts.  We have to set a limit on the things, people, and focus we allow to affect our hearts.  We can set our affection on the wrong things or people that will hurt us, destroy us, and even break us.  We can also put too much focus on our heart, letting it lead us blindly, become obsessive over something or someone, and it will unbalance us.  Balance is key.  YES, love!!!! Oh, Mylanta, allow ourselves at times to get lost in our emotions. Enjoy the euphoria or pain of it, but we must keep it in balance.  We can’t get blind and stupid by love to the point we lose sight of everything else, especially what we want and need, and who we are. That’s unhealthy and it becomes detrimental to any dreams we’ve planned or hoped to succeed. We also can’t chase our dreams without love, without using our hearts. If we close our hearts because we’ve been hurt, or we have failed before, or we are too afraid, then we’ve already failed. It means nothing.  We can gain the world, but what good is it if we are indifferent?  Indifference means not caring at all or feeling nothing - which is worse than hate. Hate is at least passionate.  Indifference is void of passion.  Indifference is cowardice.   Without heart, we will give up, because it is our love for ourselves, for the dreams we have, for our family and the people we care about, that pushes us, inspires us, and gives everything we do meaning. Even God says that there are three essential things in this life – Faith, Hope and Love, and of those three, Love is the greatest. We can’t choose to love everyone and everything, nor can we choose to love nothing or no one. Protect our love.  Protect what and who we set our affections toward.

Mind – we have to budget our minds.  If we set our minds to too many things, and not balance it out, we will spend too much of one of our most valuable assets in the wrong area, on the wrong thing, or the wrong person, and not give the attention and focus we need to our goals, dreams, and aspirations.  We have to protect our minds, protect what we focus on, what we allow to distract us.  We can ‘check-out’ sometimes because life is hard.  Many times, instead of focusing on what I needed, I allowed myself to be distracted by the wrong things or person to avoid thinking about the hard things.  I’d “check-out”.  I’ve also allowed myself to focus too much, to the point of obsession, and neglected to focus on other areas of my life. Neither was healthy or productive.  There has to be a balance. We have to budget our minds and limit the things we focus on, allow distracting us, or taking up our time.  Write out a list of what we want and need, and then protect our minds and do what we need to keep and maintain a balance to our focus.

Soul – this one is the part of us that we often neglect most.  It’s that inner-being, and many of us can’t even recognize it. We try to numb it, ignore it, or control it.  We can’t.  This is core of who we are, and I believe this is the being that continues beyond our existence, beyond this physical plane, beyond this life. We have to budget for and with our souls. We have to make time for this part of us. What good is it to gain the world, but lose our souls?  To allow life, people, circumstances, guilt, pain, and all other bullshit to come in destroy our souls?  We can lie to the world. We can lie to ourselves, but our souls know who we are, what we really want, what we really need.  We have to protect our souls – cut the vampires out of our lives, allow love into our lives, let love fill us, and then through our souls, let that love back out into the world around us. There are soulless people in this world. There is darkness and evil. I’ve seen it. I’ve experienced it.  This world is so full of hateful, mean-spirited, selfish, awful people, but we don’t have to be one of them. It’s so important to protect and nourish our souls.

These are the keys to success – in EVERY area of life. We only get one. We only live ONCE.  We only have a tiny portion of this existence to make a difference, to be counted, to have purpose.  WE control what those are by how we budget our lives by the choices me make. Make good ones. Choose love.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

Body, Mind and Soul... Day Three

Good morning and welcome back. Yesterday I promised to speak about the soul. For the sole purpose of reaching my life goals and dreams, I have to set my mind on what I want to achieve. I have to focus, fill my thoughts with the things that will help me reach those pinnacles.  I need to protect my body, mind and soul from people or things that will steal, detour, or destroy the plans I have made.  Not everyone in my life is good for me, some will not only destroy the plans I make by sabotaging my progress in my physical goals, messing with my mind and peace, but they will also seek to destroy my soul.  

From the time we are born we are told how important family and friends are, often to the point that we ‘put  up’ with toxic people in our lives because we happen to be related to them or grew up around and with them. We essentially are taught to be tolerant and acceptable of abuse if we had the misfortune of being born within an abusive family or on a particular side of the tracks. As a child, we have no choice.  As a young adult, we are often tortured during those transitional years of dependency to independence, and some of us have to navigate that journey into adulthood with an already damaged soul. 

Our souls are the most precious part of who we are.  Our exterior, our body, our skin, our faces, our strengths, our genetics, our culture… those are not the great and important aspects that truly define us as human being; those are the shallow parts.  The depth of who we are as a person is the part known as our soul. This is the part of us that defines the difference between right and wrong, compassion or apathy, love or hate, our integrity, and our self-esteem, etc. This is truly what defines our beauty.  But the world is shallow and most often can’t see beyond the exterior, physical, shallow aspects until we’ve entered into a relationship with someone, and thereby endangering our souls from the choices we made.

Come on, we’ve all done it. We’ve all at one time become infatuated with a beautiful smile, a set of dimples, strong muscles, or long, beautiful legs. We’ve fantasized about who we wanted that person of our infatuation to be, and it was good… while the fantasy lasted. But then we got to know the person behind the dimples, behind the muscles, behind the smile, behind the crocodile tears, behind the legs or the boobs, and that picture wasn’t as pretty as the one we had first imagined. Soon, those things we first found attractive was no longer eye-catching, because the soul became more and more evident. This has happened to everyone.  My question is this: How much damage did we allow to happen to our souls during this time of infatuation?  How much damage do we then cause to the next soul that comes into our lives because of the state of our now-damaged souls? Can you see the cycle?

We have to protect ourselves - our bodies, our minds, and especially our souls. We have to forget all that fucking nonsense that was drilled into us as children that we have to ‘put up’ with toxic people because they’re relatives or from the ‘hood.  We don’t HAVE to do anything or allow anyone into our lives that we don’t choose. If they’re toxic, selfish, detrimental to your own well-being, vampires that use, abuse, or take us for granted, disguised as friends but add no value to our lives, only there with their hands out when they need something – CHOOSE to protect and love yourself enough to walk away.  Choose to protect your soul. Choose to fight for yourself. Don’t allow them to infect your own soul and bring you down.

Here is a truth that I hope will change your life. It changed mine.  So, listen, and listen carefully.  IT IS NOT YOUR JOB TO SAVE THE WORLD. It’s not.  We don’t possess the power to save anyone from anything.  People have to want to save themselves. This is what I’m trying to tell you today.  YOU have to want to save YOURSELF.  It’s God’s job to save other people’s souls, not yours.  If the world would concentrate on saving themselves, focus on being a good person with a beautiful soul, and then they will have a beauty that the rest of the world can see.  They will possess goodness, kindness, and compassion the world needs.

Protect your soul.  Stop allowing people to use you, to take from you when you have nothing for yourself.  Surround yourself with people who sow INTO you, who encourage you, who lift you up; not take from you, drain you, and takes advantage of you and what you have. Until you are strong enough to be an example, to be a light, you’re sacrificing your own light, your own soul.  How can you be a light when you’re filled with darkness, and pain, and your soul is so damaged from the abuse of those who claim to love you most?  It’s not selfish to cut these toxic relationships out of your life. Separate yourself - no matter if it’s a parent, a sibling, a gown child, an ex, a childhood friend, a neighbor, or a co-worker – it doesn’t matter who they are.  If they’re toxic and they have an ugly soul, or your soul is too damaged to deal with their drama – protect yourself.   

This is YOUR life.  You only get ONE. You don’t get a do-over.

Protecting yourself, your body, mind and soul, is not going to be easy.  It will require dedication, determination, and devotion.  Love your body enough to do what is necessary to be healthy, to be fit to enjoy the things that make this life adventurous.  Love your mind enough to do what is necessary to be brilliant, open, and inquisitive, seeking out those dreams and ideas that will fulfill your life and give it purpose.  Love your soul enough to be a good person, a light in a dark world, deep love in a shallow society.  This is YOUR choice.  This is MY choice. 

I’ve been a lot of dates that remind me constantly of how much the world is so focused on the shallow outside, how much there is a lack of vision, drive, and determination in the pursuit of happiness, and how many dark souls are out there just waiting to use and abuse me.  It hurts my heart. I’m so disappointed in what I’m finding.  I had to quit dating before I fully lost faith in men and in society in general.  I’m an odd duck.  I actually care about the world around me and the people in it.  But I keep dreaming, I keep praying, and I keep working on MYSELF to become the best person I can, hoping that I may be a light for someone.  I can’t save the world. It’s not my job. I am responsible for everything I do and say, but I’m not responsible for what the world hears or how they respond.  I hope I am a light on a hill, and that is why I work so hard to make sure I protect and focus my love on my body, my mind, and my soul.

Until next time,

~T.L. Gray

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

No, this isn’t a post about the famous George Harrison song, but I think I’m beginning to understand his meaning.  I wish I could take you on a journey into my mind, into my heart, and through my fingers with every pluck, strum, and chord change on my guitar.  I know I could record the sound, but just hearing it won’t guarantee you’ll go on the journey with me. You must have ears to hear to get there.  It seems this is a journey I must take alone, but man, oh, man, I wish I could take you with me.

For the last several years I’ve been working on one song, and sometimes I stay on the same chord progressions for months before adding something new or changing a rhythm in that progression. Yet, when I begin to play, sometimes all it takes is a few chords, a few strums, a few plucks to transport me somewhere else, somewhere deep, somewhere that feels like a river of so many emotions, so many feelings, so much that it’s often too much to even try and explain.

This morning while playing, I placed my ear on the top of the body of my acoustic guitar and started the familiar progression, first with a soft individual strum of each string, giving them their own moment, their own sound, in their own time.  From the initial vibration of the sixth E string, I felt my soul stir and it wept.   There was a sadness, a loneliness found in that single note. It moved with the fullness of the vibration as I just let it sit there.  It needed to be released.  I felt part of what’s been bottled inside me, move through my fingers, the ones on the Em chord, and then through my thumb as it started at the 6^th E and moved slowly down over the next four stings.

Over and over I just slowly strummed each string, and with each new vibration I felt my soul moving with all five strings, making sure to never touch that first E string, because I knew, I felt something else waiting there.  Just the Em over and over and over and over.  The hair prickled on the back of my neck, and my stomach pitched, and a huge knot formed in my throat, but I kept playing, I kept pouring my soul into those strings over and over and over and over.  I begin to slowly rock as I play, because I can feel it coming, the release, the energy in the universe about to move through me and then back into me.

That’s the thing about playing music.  It’s not just about pouring out from me into the notes I play, but to open my soul and allow the music to pour back into me, through the vibration, through the sounds, through the waves, emitting their healing, their message, their love back into my soul. It’s like a filter, the way a body’s heart, kidneys and liver filters our systems.

After a while of just playing that Em, I finally move to this progression that only involves the top four strings… 6^th through 3^rd , with alterations of just using the top 2 and 3.  I don’t want to put the chords here, because this is an original song I’ve composed and don’t want someone else to steal it.  But, moving through this progression, the strums become a little harder with each repeat.  I feel something moving inside and it’s sad, and it’s dark, and it’s painful… and the more I play, the more it moves through me, bubbling to the surface.  This movement starts deep in the pit of my stomach, behind my belly button, and travels to my spine, up over my shoulders, and then down my arms and into my fingertips, all the while the other end of the tendrils are weaving deep into the chambers of my heart and into the hidden places of my mind.

Our voices are just another note, another vibration to mix with the sound of the strings being played on the guitar. I find myself humming and then open my mouth to release a high, yet sad note.  It’s a haunting sound, full of pain, full of heartache, full of feeling… and it’s soft, and it’s beautiful.  It complements the low sound of the guitar, and together it melts into a new melody, a new sound, evoking a new emotion.  I continue to play, I continue to sing.  My strums become harder and louder, as my song grows in intensity.

Then, like a climax, I feel myself reach the precipice and my song turns into a wail, and my fingers take over on their own and play the last few notes, and I feel all that pain, all that hurt, all that emotion release from me, release into the universe, release into the world and I stop singing, and then I stop playing. My heart is racing, my hands are shaking, and my mind is swimming as the last note fades into the ether.   I smile, and with wet lashes, I open my eyes. I look down at my guitar and just sit in awe and wonder at the power it possesses to soothe my soul.

I wish I could take you on that journey with me. I wish you could experience how music is capable to move soul as it does, but I can’t.  That was a great journey this morning. 

I think I’d like to try the ukulele, now.    

Till next time,

~Gently Weeping Guitar

Oh, My Weary Soul

God, this world is so messed up, and I’m broken in so many shattered pieces, there are just some days too heavy for me to bear. I’ve lived in this valley for a long time, actually I think I was born here, and I can’t seem to find my way out.

I’m so tired of saying ‘goodbye’. What the hell is good about bye? What the hell is so wrong with me that I’m never enough to fight for? I don’t think it’s that I’m not enough, but that I’m more than they deserve. Because I know I sure as hell deserve a lot better. I deserve something real, and the world is full of cowards too afraid to be real.

I have scars all over my body. I try to hide them, not because I’m ashamed, but because I also carry the inner scars that were created from them and don’t want to share them with just anyone. People are strange creatures. We’re controlled by our fears, and often can’t see a person beyond their skin. We lie to ourselves and convince ourselves that our faith, our beliefs, our values, or our philosophies guide and lead us in our decisions, but they don’t… our fear does.

I have a friend who says he fears nothing, but he’s lying to himself. He runs as I hard as I do, perhaps even harder, because he’s afraid. But I don’t have to tell him. In the silence, he knows the truth. However, knowing the truth doesn’t keep him from being an asshole. Even still, he’s beautiful and I love him, even though I also hate him for his vanity and cowardice.

I heard a quote this morning from Jim Carrey – “My soul is not contained within the limits of my body, my body is contained within the limitlessness of my soul.” The Journey of Purpose. I believe this. When I look at someone, I look beyond their flesh and try to see their soul. When I tell someone they’re beautiful, it isn’t their body I’m talking about, but their soul.

Who sees my soul? Who can see past the smile or beyond the scars? I believe no one. I’m just the girl who ______ (fill in the blank).

My soul is weary. My heart is crushed. My faith is weak. I’m tired of carrying this mangled scarred body around. I can’t run any more. I wasn’t meant to run, but to fly. I’m lost.

Sing With Me or Let Me Go

Inside my soul plays a melody– it’s such a beautiful song, and whenever I’m silent I can hear it.  I can feel every note, but I can’t recognize the lyrics.  There’s all this noise pushing, blocking, and making it hard to find that clear message.

Of what am I so afraid?  I’ve been to hell  - and I survived.  I couldn’t have made it through without the love and support I received from a couple of my friends, but what am I supposed to do now that they don’t have to carry or hold me anymore?  I’m so fucking tired of walking away or standing still as I watch others disappear into the shadows – their songs that helped me so much fading into the background.   I’m like a dust particle floating through a beam of sunlight – I’m falling, fluttering in uncontrolled chaos, swished around by every gust of wind.  My time in the sunlight is for but a moment.  I know eventually I’ll touch the floor and disappear among the others who’ve fell before.  Now is all I have. Today.  My song.

I wish we would just hear each other – really listen to each other’s heart, as human beings.  We’re such a mess, but we’re a beautiful mess.  I just want to hear my song as I dance in the sunlight.  I must let go – grab the notes that work, let go of the ones off key.  There is no perfection, there is no answer that will solve all the mysteries, there’s only now, there’s only today, there’s only one song.  Sing with me or let me go.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray