Choose Your Skin with Care

Imagine having to reach a place in life when you have no other go but to have your skin peeled off! Having a small bruise is bad enough and terrible to bear… but having the skin from all over your body peeled? Absolutely unbearable! Well, you may wonder what I am trying to get at. It is simple, if you knew that something you are choosing today would have to peeled off someday in such a painful fashion, would you allow that something to get attached to you in the first place?  

Ours is a generation that easily adapts to new things without even considering what it is we are embracing and making an irreversible part of our lives. I would say irreversible because even if we do get through the consequences of our choices, we are never the same as what we were before we made that choice.

Every choice makes a statement about who we are and what we think of ourselves and how much we care about our future… in this world and the eternal too. Even if the whole world decides to go the wrong way, if we are seriously considering the choices we are making for ourselves and we realize it, we would refrain from following them in doing the wrong thing. Doing so would mean that we care for ourselves truly.

When we make a commitment to love ourselves, we need to assess how we treat ourselves and the things that concern our lives, our minds and our future. Moreover we also need to assess the relationships that are close to our hearts and whether they nourish us positively or bleed us to death in spirit and otherwise. When we learn about how toxic and dangerous people can be it is better we act on such information speedily and do what needs to be done to save ourselves from greater harm. Pretending that nothing is wrong could mean that we hate ourselves and don’t care to deal with something that is harmful for us.

Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Here we are first called to love ourselves, to care about ourselves (not in the selfish way which is at the cost of others). And then we are called to love others the way we love ourselves. So if you say you really love yourself, what are you doing about it? What are the choices you are making that shows that you do love yourself?

Would you choose death, disease, stagnation, addiction, emotional problems and dependency on trivial things? Would you choose to live in a way that could end your life in just a few years? Would you choose a relationship that makes a puppet out of you and kills the very spirit of who you are as a person? Would you embrace a habit, an attitude that would lead to your destruction or downfall? Would you take life as it comes and not do something to make it more meaningful and better? 

Take a look at where you are standing… is it shaky ground? Is it firm grounded based on values, principles that will cover you through every kind of situation? If you learn today that you are not standing on firm ground… do something about it! Search for the life that will give you the lasting happiness, peace, satisfaction and success that won’t kill you. Search for the ways that take you to a place where you can live without regrets. Search for the people who will build you up, care for you and not be the reason for you to break and fall apart. Don’t feel paralyzed at this knowledge… get up, dust yourself and move on.

True, during times of change we may feel very alone… but it is worth the pain. Burn the candle for yourself, encourage yourself knowing that you are doing the right thing… and keep going one step at a time. Eventually you will see you have made progress. Eventually you will see other beacons of light calling out to you, other voices saying, “Keep going, we are beside you… you are not alone.” It will be a while… but don’t look back. Keep walking, bearing the weight of your burdens. These burdens are not ordinary burdens, they are meant to make your shoulders strong.

Someday when our lives are over, when we cross that shore that is between life and death, we will be able to look back without regret. We will see a life that was lived well because we stopped to think about what we were doing. Those unbearable experiences of pain we went through when we had to peel off the negative habits, thinking, relationships and destructive ways in us was worth it.

So the question is ‘Do you really love yourself?’ If you do, choose the things that become your skin, your second nature… and a part of you with great care.