When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to becoming his equal. When you meet someone not as good as you are, look within and examine your own self. — Confucious
Friends have said I have changed, so much so that they have to alter the way they view me as a person. I know I have changed, but what exactly is change? I have said it in the past, and I know that there are some who are just waiting for me to falter, like a fat guy on a diet, they want to catch me sneaking a donut, or a candy bar so they can scream “Aha!” point their finger and say, “I knew the real you was inside there somewhere.”
To some degree that has already happened. I had an experience recently where the old Cary came out, and part of the old Cary is my dark sense of humor. I made a joke about a subject that 99.9% of the world, except maybe the late Sam Kinison excluded, would consider it politically incorrect. One of the people in the room said, “I thought you changed.” They then laughed it off as if it were only a joke. But we all know people use tactics such as humor to express what they truly mean, and then try to hide it under the guise of “I was only joking.” However I knew deep down that is exactly what they wanted to think, so it would stop them from analyzing their own selves, and how they view this world we live in.
So once again what is change? Well I can tell you what it is not. It is not perfection. It does not mean you live a mistake free life. When I think of change, and if someone were to ask me if I changed I would say yes, because to me change is awareness.
I still make mistakes, all of the time. I still falter and allow my ego to rise up, or the competitive spirit to take over and create situations that I otherwise would rather not be in. But the awareness in me that is expanding every day I go on this journey allows me now to recognize all that for what it is, and because of this awareness I can now gain more control over myself during these situations and not allow them to blow out of proportion.
So I changed how I look at the world, so now I choose to focus on the positive rather than the negative, and I decided to speak words of praise and encouragement instead of tearing people, or more importantly myself down. Does this mean I walk on water, or can raise people from the dead? No, I am far from perfect and perfection is not what I am striving for, and neither should you, or we will both be very disappointed.
I am grateful for awareness. Because the more I become aware, the more those aspect of myself that I want to change inside me, die off and have less and less control.
