Princess Sassy Pants & Co.™

I was recently invited to my high school class reunion, and it got me thinking about something that often ponder. I don’t remember a lot from those years, as it was a very traumatic time for me; there are only tiny snippets of memories. Nevertheless, when I look back, it feels like I’ve lived hundreds of lives since then. I don’t know if I’d recognize that young woman if I saw her on the street, and yet this is the person my classmates probably still think of as me. What else would they have to go on? 

So many from our past only remember us as we were when we knew them. Meanwhile, we have experienced many small and perhaps many large shifts…we are not the same as when they knew us.

We grow and evolve. We sometimes grow in giant leaps but often change slowly with many tiny steps. We shed our old lives and step into new ones. Some of us even get our wings and take flight, while the people in our past still remember us as caterpillars clinging to branches. A version of us that is often long gone.

This is also true for those in our daily lives; they think we are the same as last year, last week…yesterday. But are we? I know I’m not. I know my wings are continually evolving, taking me to new heights every day.

The twist is that we do the same thing with others; we see them through the eyes of the past without giving them room to grow and evolve. Do we see those closest to us with fresh eyes each day? Do we allow them to take flight, or do we cling to the caterpillar image we’ve held of them, perhaps for years?

This is what makes meeting new people and having new relationships so exhilarating; we don’t hold these new people to past images we have of them. We allow them to unfold to us.  It’s not the “newness” of these relationships that feels so good; it’s that we are open, we are open to seeing with fresh eyes, and this openness makes us feel alive.

As we spend more time in these new relationships, we start to catalog all the things we think we know about the person until, once again, we only see them too from the perspective of a past that is gone. And that relationship no longer feels alive. It’s not. It’s one based on the past, and the past is always gone and must feel empty. (Does that make sense?)

There’s a profound principle that, once accepted, can change everything: We experience what we believe is true of others. So if I want to be free from the confines of my past, I will be free as I free others from theirs. I will fly higher as I allow others to have their wings. I am released as I release others.

Be willing to see others through fresh eyes and let them all fly, and you will skyrocket beyond your wildest imagination!