C. JoyBell C.'s Blog, page 3

We think the magic of childhood is something we'll never get to experience again, we see childhood as a transient stage. We think that we're children only once.

But let me tell you, that's a lie. It's a lie that we need to be told so our deadlines can be met and our cities can be built. So we can take care of laws and wars. We need that lie for this world to work the way they want it to work.

The truth is, we're always children! It's not a stage. It's who we really are. We just grow bigger, that's all. And when you're bigger, you're supposed to do all those things like mathematics and marriage.

We are always inside of our childhoods, we never really leave that place. Time goes by and we start paying bills and stop believing in people. And we act like we can take it.

Nobody's not a kid anymore. We wear different costumes now and we struggle with different monsters. But it's all still costumes and it's all still monsters under our beds.

Don't you see? Nothing really changes and if we could see ourselves from the outside looking in, we'd see children; inhabiting their childhoods; with closets full of bigger costumes and bigger monster-homing beds.

 

Imagine having first class seats on your favourite airline that's about to take off to your whole new life in another country. Now imagine getting off that flight because you realise that the lady who sold you a box of juice in the airport has short-changed you a few nickels and dimes.

You get off the airplane, go back to the juice lady, and demand your nickels and dimes be given to you in fair amounts. But wait, there's confusion over which juice you actually ordered. Instead of letting this one go, and getting back to your first class flight that's about to take off, you actually opt to stay there at the juice vending corner to sort out the juice box mess!

This is what I call, "nickel and dime energy". Nickel and dime energy is a case of blinding pride. Nickel and dime energy will really have you leaving first class seats on airplanes ten minutes before takeoff because you were short-changed by a juice box vendor.

How does nickel and dime energy manifest in your life? It manifests in the times that you hold onto juice boxes because your pride won't let you take a few less coins than what you believe you rightly deserve. That looks like giving up happiness to save face for a handful of aunties with expectations.

That looks like giving up happiness to save face for a community that has held you to a few expectations. That looks like giving up the rest of your life, to fulfill a story you once promised yourself was for you. Digging your feet in at the juice stand to get your nickels and dimes because that's where your blinding pride has gotten you.

Meanwhile, your first class flight just took off to the rest of your whole life! And all your luggage was on it too. What's luggage? Luggage is your heart, your joy, your meaning. Your soul. In the end, you're standing there with your nickels and dimes, and you sure showed that juice box lady she couldn't mess with you! You're quite the hero of your own life, aren't you?

I have seen nickel and dime energy in action too much during my time on Earth, thus far. It breaks my heart when I attend funerals of people whom I know chose to stand their ground at the juice box corner in order to avoid shame. They spent their entire life that way. They died that way. I know because I was aware of how miserable they were, they told me.

Shame is just another negative emotion that for some reason, the human mind interprets as a cataclysm. In reality, the only way it becomes a cataclysm, is because of its ability to inhibit you from moving upward and on. Shame is like a dark mist decending over a field of flowers. Your mind tells you that within that mist, must lurk a hundred different monsters.

So, you decide never to walk through the misty field. But let me tell you, that the monsters in the mist do not exist. And if you choose to walk through that field, you WILL get to the other side. But if you don't? If you're too blinded by pride to allow yourself the feeling of shame? Then believe me, you will never get to the other side and you will in fact die and be buried on account of imaginary monsters. You will be buried in the ground clutching nickels and dimes.

Is this the story of your life? Is this the legacy you want to leave behind? Are you really going to stop living your life on account of the juice box ladies of your life? And sometimes, you are your own juice box lady! The shame exists in your own mirror! Standards you held yourself up to that you believe need to be kept. Listen to me: never be afraid of being seen as less-than. But always be afraid of being a dead body in the coffin, clutching nickels and dimes. 

Imagine having first class seats on your favourite airline that's about to take off to your whole new life in another country. Now imagine getting off that flight because you realise that the lady who sold you a box of juice in the airport has short-changed you a few nickles and dimes.

You get off the airplane, go back to the juice lady, and demand your nickles and dimes be given to you in fair amounts. But wait, there's confusion over which juice you actually ordered. Instead of letting this one go, and getting back to your first class flight that's about to take off, you actually opt to stay there at the juice vending corner to sort out the juice box mess!

This is what I call, "nickle and dime energy". Nickle and dime energy is a case of blinding pride. Nickle and dime energy will really have you leaving first class seats on airplanes ten minutes before takeoff because you were short- changed by a juice box vendor.

How does nickle and dime energy manifest in your life? It manifests in the times that you hold onto juice boxes because your pride won't let you take a few less coins than what you believe you rightly deserve. That looks like giving up happiness to save face for a handful of aunties with expectations.

That looks like giving up happiness to save face for a community that has held you to a few expectations. That looks like giving up the rest of your life, to fulfill a story you once promised yourself was for you. Digging your feet in at the juice stand to get your nickles and dimes because that's where your blinding pride has gotten you.

Meanwhile, your first class flight just took off to the rest of your whole life! And all your luggage was on it too. What's luggage? Luggage is your heart, your joy, your meaning. Your soul. In the end, you're standing there with your nickles and dimes, and you sure showed that juice box lady she couldn't mess with you! You're quite the hero of your own life, aren't you?

I have seen nickle and dime energy in action too much during my time on Earth, thus far. It breaks my heart when I attend funerals of people whom I know chose to stand their ground at the juice box corner in order to avoid shame. They spent their entire life that way. They died that way.

Shame is just another negative emotion that for some reason, the human mind interprets as a cataclysm. In reality, the only way it becomes a cataclysm, is because of its ability to inhibit you from moving upward and on. Shame is like a dark mist decending over a field of flowers. Your mind tells you that within that mist, must lurk a hundred different monsters.

So, you decide never to walk through the misty field. But let me tell you, that the monsters in the mist do not exist. And if you choose to walk through that field, you WILL get to the other side. But if you don't? If you're too blinded by pride to allow yourself the feeling of shame? Then believe me, you will never get to the other side and you will in fact die and be buried on account of imaginary monsters. You will be buried in the ground clutching nickles and dimes.

Is this the story of your life? Is this the legacy you want to leave behind? Are you really going to stop living your life on account of the juice box ladies of your life? And sometimes, you are your own juice box lady! The shame exists in your own mirror! Standards you held yourself up to that you believe need to be kept. Listen to me: never be afraid of being seen as less-than. But always be afraid of being a dead body in the coffin, clutching nickles and dimes. 

For a very long time, during my earlier years, I felt that being desired was the most valuable aspect in attraction and romantic relationships. I spotted value in the feeling of someone else being desirous of me.

But now I know that far greater in value is the capability to give, the willingness to give, the ability to give. Predators desire their prey but is that of any value to the prey? Of course not. It is, in fact, the prey's downfall to be desired.

Someone wanting to give to you, wanting to add more to your life, wanting to put more into your basket, wanting to make more space within themselves for you: this is value. This is what's valuable, this is where it's at!

Someone desirous of you can consume you, eat you alive, feed on you, until you're half dead and the only thing keeping you alive is the longing to continue feeling desired by that person. It's the dark path of attraction, the cold cellar of a relationship.

Run away from that. Be brave enough to question if and what another person is able to give to you and how much they want to give it. Be brave enough to consider that you might be worth everything someone wants to give you, and then even more! 

We all live on this same planet, but let me tell you, that no two people are looking at the same world. No two realities are identical. Every person sees a world based upon that person's own character, mind, personality, childhood, history, memories, brain chemistry, blood type, so on and so forth. 

I have learned that it's best to keep this in mind when meeting anyone at all. We may all look like the same species on the outside; but no two people see the same exact world! We experience moments based upon a million factors that are unique to our own biology and psyche. 

Inhabiting the same exact moment, two people could be experiencing entirely unrelated feelings and thoughts. If we could only keep this in mind at all times, our ability to think on our feet and to move our souls accordingly, would take herculian leaps! 

But look, this is where love becomes very interesting: we suddenly feel so seen and so heard, when another person stands with us in a moment and shares an experience identical to ours, or at least very similar to ours, and it is in that fusing of "channels" into one frequency, that we have found the word "love" to describe it. 

We lose love when the frequencies diverge again. Then we come up with so many reasons of what "love really means" in order to help us stay together. But the truth is, we are all electrical beings, pulsing with soundwaves and photons; all of our interactions and everything that drives us; all of that is determined by frequencies and charges. 

We would all like to ultimately meet someone whose electrical currents fuse permanently and seemlessly with our own. Some do find it, while others never will. For whatever reasons they fabricate or that were frabricated for them; some never will. 

It is in the shared vision of what is in front of us, around us, between us and within us, that we find what it means to belong. And that is why heartbreak is unbearable; because heartbreak is actually a fuse that's been cut. Where do you connect to now? Where do you ground now? Who will look out over the streets with you now and light the roads with the same luminousity? 

And this is why we look for someone. And that is what loneliness means. Loneliness is just the desire to validate one's information on this world we all inhabit! If nobody else is inhabiting the same moment with you, how do you know that anything you touch and feel is even real? But what's real becomes real only when someone else experiences it with us and like us. 

The desire to be loved is actually just the desire to confirm our existence. To be able to say, "Yes, I am here, I am really here, and this rock flinging itself in a dark space, around a star, is real. I am in fact alive." Love is the confirmation of life and that's the only reason it exists. 

Too many of us fail to find this, so we make up all these other reasons instead."Love to fit in" ; "love because it's time to"; "love because it makes sense"; "love because you're supposed to". It all falls short of what all of us know in our hearts to be true love. The confirmation of our existence, the confirmation of our souls.

People don't want the truth. People just want something to stand for. When people have something to stand for, it becomes irrelevant to them if it's the truth or not.

People want a hero, a villain, a plot, and a role. And they want their role to be either the hero or the hero's supporter. Their existence can become consumed by this longing. The quest is not for truth; the quest is for a sense of purpose.

This state of human nature is often skillfully and effectively manipulated. Feed people a constant hero-villain-plot-role loop and you can get them to turn towards any direction you wish. So long as you are able to tease and satiate this appetite.

If you're not careful, you could just go on like this for the rest of your life; waiting for the next cycle, the next person to hate, the next person to crown, the next role to play...until one day you're just dead.

The longing for purpose and for the validity of personal virtue, are normal experiences of being human. At the same time, this leaves you vulnerable to manipulations, until the next thing you know, you're just a nut and bolt on a machine fashioned to churn for the whims of a few.

Throughout our entire history as a species, we can see that we have paved the way, repeatedly, for crucifixions and coronations. We don't actually try to ask ourselves, if maybe the clown is getting the crown and the king is getting the cross.

There is a lot of talk about "emotional unavailability" and while I do acknowledge that some people are simply emotionally unavailable; I also think that everyone does need to ask themselves, "Why do I expect other people's emotions to be available to me?"

We tend to have this unspoken belief that the emotions of another person should be an open, eat-all-you-can buffet we are entitled to have access to. But I don't even know how we got here! This is unhealthy, to say the least.

It is unhealthy and it is unnatural. Before another person's emotions become available to you, that person needs to establish what your place in their life might be. The nature of the relationship needs to first be identified. Your standing in their life needs to first be determined.

It is unnatural to expect emotional availability from another person before the nature of the relationship or friendship has been established. Why should anyone be available to you before they've determined your value in their lives, and vice versa? A person who wants to immediately be available to that degree is probably someone not stable enough to be sustainable with in the long run.

Emotional availability is a developed act of nature; it's not something you can force in order to feel like you actually have the security of that relationship; no matter what type of relationship that may be (platonic or romantic). Sometimes it develops very fast, other times slowly, and other times, it never develops at all (regardless of time), because you're just not compatible.

Incompatibility is a real thing. And it can come across as disrespectful to overlook that. It's respectful to identify the ways you're incompatible and not force beyond those boundaries. Let the person be the way they are and vice versa. However, with a different person, it might just click from day one and feel like you've know each other forever. But when it's not that, it's just not that.

We all need to stop expecting other people's availability to meet us where we want to be met just because we want to be met there. Everyone needs to establish another person's place in their life, so they may then proceed accordingly. It's never okay to expect a jump to the parts that feel good if it's not actually mutually happening for everyone involved.

People can sense when you want a friendship or a relationship because you want it to fill up your needs, vs. when you've met a person you actually want to get to know because you feel like it may be compatible for the both of you. There is a big difference there! We all need to desire to live organically from the heart, as opposed to setting up bucketlists of what we need from people. 

There is a lot of talk about "emotional unavailability" and while I do acknowledge that some people are simply emotionally unavailable; I also think that everyone does need to ask themselves, "Why do I expect other people's emotions to be available to me?"

We tend to have this unspoken belief that the emotions of another person should be an open, eat-all-you-can buffet we are entitled to have access to. But I don't even know how we got here! This is unhealthy, to say the least.

It is unhealthy and it is unnatural. Before another person's emotions become available to you, that person needs to establish what your place in their life might be. The nature of the relationship needs to first be identified. Your standing in their life needs to first be determined.

It is unnatural to expect emotional availability from another person before the nature of the relationship or friendship has been established. Why should anyone be available to you before they've determined your value in their lives, and vice versa? A person who wants to immediately be available to that degree is probably someone not stable enough to be sustainable with in the long run.

Emotional availability is a developed act of nature; it's not something you can force in order to feel like you actually have the security of that relationship; no matter what type of relationship that may be (platonic or romantic). Sometimes it develops very fast, other times slowly, and other times, it never develops at all (regardless of time), because you're just not compatible.

Incompatibility is a real thing. And it can come across as disrespectful to overlook that. It's respectful to identify the ways you're incompatible and not force beyond those boundaries. Let the person be the way they are and vice versa. However, with a different person, it might just click from day one and feel like you've know each other forever. But when it's not that, it's just not that.

We all need to stop expecting other people's availability to meet us where we want to be met just because we want to be met there. Everyone needs to establish another person's place in their life, so they may then proceed accordingly. It's never okay to expect a jump to the parts that feel good if it's not actually mutually happening for everyone involved.

People can sense when you want a friendship or a relationship because you want it to fill up your needs, vs. when you've met a person you actually want to get to know because you feel like it may be compatible for the both of you. There is a big difference there! We all need to desire to live organically from the heart, as opposed to setting up bucketlists of what we need from people. 

Do you love yourself? I mean like really. Really, really. When you think back on all the stages of your life, on all the people you've been, on all the eras you've lived, do you see someone who was good enough? Or, do you see everything you didn't have, at each place you found yourself in?

I one day realised that when I looked back at the segments of my life, at each person I was through the changing times, I didn't see someone who was good enough. Not at all. Instead, I saw all the things I should have had, but didn't.

It then dawned on me, that we base our "enoughness" on the circumstances we were born into, or given into; rather than, on who we are inside of those circumstances! We cannot control any of it; but we can control ourselves. Despite all that you deserved, which you didn't ever receive, who were you able to BE?

In the presence of poverty, who were you able to be? In the absence of affection, who were you able to be? In the presence of hostility, who did you become? In the absence of safety, who did you become? Because that's who you need to look at and that's who you need to love. That's who is enough! That person is good enough!

Despite life, who were you? And who are you? We cannot, and we shall not, spend our days apologising for all the provisions that we did not receive; instead, we should and we shall, fixate on the value of our pure lives existing as a soul on a planet spinning around a star. If we were but that alone: souls spinning around stars; without expectations, without ideals, without standards and without norms; would we be good enough? Would we love ourselves? Because that's what it's actually all about.

My biggest regret, is that, it took me my entire life thus far, to come into the knowledge that loving myself, actually loving myself, was always supposed to be the greatest love of my life. 

It has always been expensive to feel feminine. Ever since we were little it has always cost money to feel feminine. The richer your parents were, the more feminine you were afforded to feel. They could buy you the miniskirts, the pretty shoes, all the dolls, the purses. And if you were poor all you had were sneakers and Ninja Turtle action figures. Even today, it's money you need for getting your hair done, your nails done, or for buying those outfits, shoes and lipgloss.

We need a reformation of what it means to be feminine! Our understanding and experience of the feminine must not rely on money. Feminine energy must come from your core, your soul, regardless of your circumstances. We need the eyes to look at women as feminine; notwithstanding the hair, the makeup, the shoes, clothing and jewellery. What is feminine? It is inner resolve, it is self-possession, it is intelligence, wisdom, compassion, calmness, softness and courage.

Femininity is a collection of the pieces that help you on your journey as a woman and that collection looks different for everyone. There's nothing wrong with any of the tools you add to your collection; your collection is unique and distinct, as you are. There are feminine substances that do not ever rely on money, that every woman has access to, wherever she may find herself in life.

All women should know, that femininity is not found at the mall, in the department store, in catalogues or in the lack of problems and bills to pay. Femininity is found in how you have crafted your own story with the hands of love, to see yourself with eyes of love as who you have become, despite the odds and despite life. If you were to lose it all, you would still feel feminine, because your femininity would be the story carried inside you that only you can tell.