My best friend attended a Vineyard USA church in Boston for years.  I sort of attended vicariously for years, too, through her and conversations we would have over the weekly sermons presented there.  It was a congregation and church leadership that indirectly had a huge impact on my understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. They helped me begin to ask the hard questions that would eventually lead me away from much of mainstream Christianity.  Kind of ironic…Christians inadvertently and unintentionally opening the door for me to walk away from my childhood faith.

Anyway, there is one concept that the lead pastor spoke of on occasion that really helped me rethink the whole “Are you a Christian or not?” question.  This was an important question in my youth…I desperately wanted to know who was “in” or “out”, because then I could have the assurance of which destination I was likely to end up in, heaven or hell, and who would be joining me. I wanted a firm set of criteria with which to evaluate people’s faith.  Knowing boundaries and being certain of ‘in-ness’ felt safe and secure.  The idea of not knowing for certain who was good in God’s eyes and who wasn’t terrified me.

But Dave (the Vineyard pastor) turned this type of thinking of mine on its head with the concept of centered sets versus bounded sets in relation to faith and who is considered “in” and who is considered “out”.

 

 

The picture above is an example of a bounded set.  Imagine that everyone inside the red circle has asked Jesus into their lives as their personal Savior.  They are now within the fold, under God’s safe umbrella.  Those on the outside of the red circle are out of the club, the ones certain to be left behind in case of rapture.  While I grew up with bounded set thinking in Christianity, it is a harsh way to go.  It defines people as “we” and “them”.  Those outside the protective circle are “other”. And anyone on the inside of the circle is “right and justified”.

But Dave offered another perspective in his sermons, that of a centered set.

 

As you can see in this graphic, there is no circle delineating who is in or out.  The point is all about relationship and where people are in reference to the cross, or Jesus.  The fundamental premise behind this centered set idea is: are you moving closer to Jesus, or away from Jesus? Not, are you a born-again Christian or aren’t you?  And, along with that, where are you in relation to others, where are you within community?

 

It took me time to realize it, but this concept of bounded set versus centered set was a stepping stone to help me walk away from my childhood beliefs that following Jesus meant separation from everyone who didn’t follow him.  While I no longer believe at all in atonement theory and the need to accept Jesus as Savior, I still love these graphics as a model for looking at life in general.  Now, instead of a cross being at the middle of the centered set graphic, it becomes awakening, or ultimate love, or the discovery of the Ground of Being through uncovering our true selves.  Once again, the point is not whether we have awakened or become completely self-aware as compared to those who have not.  It’s about the fact that we are all on a journey.  We are all at different points on that journey, and some of us are moving towards love and our true selves, while others may be moving away.

The funny thing about these journey continuums toward that center goal: they aren’t necessarily linear.  From the outside, we may think someone is going the opposite direction from what is good for them. But we have little grounds to judge, because in the paradoxical setup of life, sometimes we have to descend to ascend.  People may need to go backward for a while to get farther along down the path. So, determining whether they are “in” or “out” becomes impossible, and in fact, is no longer a question even worth asking.  This simple understanding brings freedom.  Everyone is OK; they just are where they are on their own journey.

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Krista Tippett interviewed Brené Brown recently on her podcast, On Being.  Both Krista Tippett and Brené Brown are amazing, so if you haven’t already, I highly encourage everyone to check them out. In this particular episode, Brown talked about some research she had done in the past with middle school-aged children. She asked them what the difference was between “fitting in” and “belonging”.  The kids offered profound answers, like “Fitting in is when you want to be a part of something; belonging is when others want you,” and “It’s really hard not to fit in or belong at school, but not belonging at home is the worst.”

I was driving in my car when listening to this podcast, and when I heard those two statements, I had a visceral, gut-wrench response.  Because I know exactly what this feels like.  As I drove and pondered and listened to Brown, I went back in my mind to my childhood, adolescence, and even early adulthood.  I think the first twenty-five years of my life can be succinctly summed up as “Julie tried her damndest to figure out where she belonged, and if she belonged at all.” I struggled so hard to fit in, hoping that I would be accepted and fill the belonging-shaped void in my heart.  Sometimes I did fit in, but often I didn’t.  The hard part about trying to fit in is that you do it at the expense of your own true self, your authenticity. You play-act at different roles, hoping that you will finally find one that will make people want you.  Then, you either struggle with the pain that comes with not being true to yourself, or you desperately hope you can keep the facade up and no one will find you out and label you a fraud.

This is probably why I clung so hard to the Jesus story of my youth.  If I believed the right things, did the right things and prayed the right prayers, I was IN!  I belonged!  The God I believed in then set criteria for being “in” or “out’ that felt tangible and clear, which felt safe.  Jesus was my friend if I did whatsoever he commanded me (Bible reference here), so check, check, check…I fulfilled the requirements. I was good and God wanted me.

But it really didn’t work, because that bounded set model is all about conditionality and making sure to stay within certain boundaries.  Ultimately, it is an illusion of belonging based in fear.

*************************************************************************************When I was little, I used to get a horrible feeling every so often. It was sort of like a “someone walking over my grave” shiver, but more of an internal feeling than an external shake. Basically, it was this deep sense that I didn’t belong.  Not in this life, not in my body, not in my family, not in this world.  It was dreadful really, because it made me feel illegitimate, like I was an imposter human, a wannabe. I felt like I took up space that wasn’t rightfully mine.  And from a very early age, I felt unwanted and unseen at my core.

Now, this is not a knock on my family or the community I grew up in. I was loved by many, but I was also very neurotic, so what I perceived may not have been at all what others were trying to express. However, the fact is, the feeling of not belonging had a tremendous influence on the shaping of my life.

But this is why I love the centered set model, why I love the enchanted expression that we all came from stardust, and the idea that growth in life is not linear as we tend to assume.  Breaking free from the bounded set borders was liberating because now, instead of having to judge and evaluate everyone based on their doing the “right” things, I see that we all just “are”.  We can love everyone in their “is-ness” and love ourselves in our “is-ness”, too.  And if there are no boundaries, no walls, no checklists, no criteria, then we don’t have to try and fit in. We just automatically belong. I belong.

I think, at the most basic, simple level….this is the real definition of salvation, the thing that we want more than anything in the deepest, hidden places of our hearts. Salvation is the realization, the awakening to the true understanding, that you’re OK where you are, and you belong.

Parenting is really hard.  Like REALLY hard.

(Don’t worry, this is not another post about how to parent or me lamenting about some parenting fail on my end…hang with me).

If anything has brought me to the absolute end of my rope, it’s with trying to raise my three boys. As many other parents of littles often bemoan, our children do not enter this world with an instruction manual.  And for everyone who says the Bible is God’s instruction manual for raising kids, I argue that crucial chapters must have been lost prior to publication, or canonization, whichever you prefer.

Some days I parent like a boss, am efficient, compassionate, and wise.  But who am I kidding, most days it feels like I’ve got nothing and hope at the end of my life I will get graded on a curve. If it weren’t for the objective outsiders who love me and have chosen to do life with me, I’d be an even bigger parenting mess than I am right now.

Thanks to a FB ad from Scientific American, I stumbled across a book called The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives.  Of course, being the nerdy, desperate parent I am, I stepped up and got it on Audible.  I’m about halfway into it, and find it to be a really good read (or listen), along the same lines as work done by Dan Siegel and Susan Stiffleman, for parents out there who are seeking out wise voices in rearing these little creatures of ours.

One of the primary points that the authors of the Self-Driven Child are trying to make is that children in today’s world are lacking a sense of self control and self agency.  In fact, they point to studies that have been done showing that when children and young adults don’t have any sense of real control over their lives in any meaningful way, they are prone to developing depression and anxiety that can stick with them throughout adulthood. For children to develop sound mental health, they need to get a good grasp of their identity, which is found by being allowed to make decisions and mistakes, and try new things within fair limits and under the umbrella of their parents’ unconditional love. Basically, NOT helicopter parenting or authoritarian parenting.

When I was listening to the first handful of chapters of the book, I couldn’t help but notice how it correlated well with something Richard Rohr has taught about for years. In his work as a Franciscan priest, he has spent alot of time in prisons working with young men.  What he found over time was that many of these men in prisons grew up without fathers, they never gained a solid sense of identity and they never underwent an initiation into manhood. He researched cultures from around the world and found that initiation rites were foundational for men and women, but especially men, to enter adulthood as mature and purpose-driven.  Rohr went on to develop a program for men in contemporary Western culture that offer them a chance to experience an initiation of sorts.

Rohr also developed another idea of the first and second halves of life.  He argues that during the first half of life, we need a good, strong container – that is, we need a strong foundation with a solid identity. This first half of life container is what helps us learn to be successful in the world, survive, build security and families, hold down jobs.  But, he also points out that we must all have a second half of life as well, where we realize that we are powerless and not really in control of anything after all. Rohr argues that everyone will at some point reach the end of themselves; it may be precipitated by a mid-life crisis, or it may be on the death bed, but everyone will eventually realize that the identity they built up in the first half of life was really just an illusion and not the whole point of life after all. This is the stage of life where our true selves can begin to emerge.

It’s paradoxical…why build up an ego and identity, if you must simply have to shed it down the road?   Why build a life if you’re just going to have to die to it? I don’t know, I don’t really get it, but the Perennial Tradition makes this clear: you must construct an understanding of life so that you can deconstruct it, so that a true one can finally be reconstructed.  Or as the Dalai Lama puts it, we must “Learn and obey the rules very well so that you will know how to break them properly.”

Anyway, back to parenting. I’ve often wondered why we don’t have children when we are older and wiser.  Wouldn’t we be better parents by then?  I mean, grandparents are always calmer, kinder, and fun than parents.

But now I wonder if life built child-bearing into younger adulthood (for reasons other than the obvious ones like an 80-year woman with osteoporosis probably shouldn’t try to push out a baby from her hips) because it helps to offer part of the crisis we need to help jar us out of our first half of life containers and into the second half of life wisdom.

I mean seriously, what else will drive you into a sense of absolute powerlessness than children?  Like, when your six year old barfs on the moving walkway conveyor belt at the Boston airport and you have no freaking clue what to do as you watch vomit slowly move down into the belly of the contraption and you feel the need to apologize profusely to the airport maintenance who have to disable and disembowel the whole thing to clean it out?

Or when one of your children has emotional regulation issues and nothing you can say, do, or offer helps to reduce the massive temper tantrum they’ve been engaging in in an entirely inappropriate public setting?

Or….when you realize that you will have to endure at least 10 more years of non-stop potty humor and fart noises at the dinner table, in the car, at entirely inappropriate public settings, etc?

Parenting in the earlier part of adulthood is the perfect opportunity to ruin the strong identities we’ve built for ourselves, and we’re left with two choices: insist we still have control and try to convince ourselves of this until our children fly the nest…or, hold up the white flag, realize that as Eckhart Tolle says, our children may have passed through us, but they are not ours, and act as consultants more than dictators to help our children build up a strong sense of self and identity with which to launch out into the world.

We help them build up their identity while they help tear ours down.  What a tradeoff! Hmph.

Grandparents seem to have learned the lesson. Another reason old people don’t have babies…they wouldn’t have gotten to the wise place of powerlessness and loss of control without having first been aided by their own children.  By the time they get to their grandkids, they (generally) know which battles to fight, what really matters, and what doesn’t.   Grandparents have learned to let go of the illusion of control over children, embrace reality, and then proceed to pull their grandchildren out of the path of rampaging, frustrated parents and spoil the dickens out of them.

I kind of can’t wait to be a grandparent.  But as an Alabama friend of mine used to say, “Now ya’ll know, to get there you’ve got to leave here!” So, I will continue to work to step back and let my children strengthen their self-identities and first half of life containers by not trying to over-control them, while they doggedly and daily point out that any real control I have over their lives is illusory.  (And I smile smugly to myself, knowing that one day their own children will sweetly offer them the same courtesies.)

 

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. ”        -Ernest Hemingway

Warning:  I will be talking about blood and scalpels in this post, so if you’re squeamish, avert your eyes.

A couple of weeks ago I had a community nursing clinical at the Wound Center for a local hospital. I was able to observe as people with diabetic wounds, pressure ulcers, and boils received treatment.

Unfortunately, the rate of type 2 diabetes is ever increasing, and with it comes an increase in wounds resulting from nerve damage.  Healing is then impaired because diabetics tend to have poor circulation in their extremities, and recovering tissues need good blood supplies bringing in adequate amounts of oxygen.

The diabetic patients I saw on this particular day at the wound center had wounds on their feet. In several cases, the patients had injured themselves by stepping on something sharp, but it took them days to realize it, and by then they had developed significant open sores.

Because diabetic patients with wounds like these aren’t getting good blood flow to the area, tissues become necrotic and die. Necrotic tissue cannot be restored, and increases the risk for infection, so it must be cut away. In both patients, the doctor cut away any blackened, dead tissue until he reached the margins of healthy tissue. But then, interestingly, the doctor would continue cutting with his scalpel, into the healthy, pink, exposed tissue.

If an observer was watching the doctor and didn’t know what the doctor was doing, he might be horrified.  Why make the patient’s wound worse and cause more bleeding? The reason for this practice was to enhance blood flow to the damaged area.  By cutting into healthy tissue on the edges of the wound, more blood was allowed to enter, bringing in life-giving oxygen to help promote healing.

It sounds paradoxical…injure the patient to heal the patient.

I have found this same paradox to be present and true in our emotional lives.  When we experience disappointment, grief, or trauma, even microtraumas, it is easy and instinctual to hunker down, close ourselves off, and resist any further pain.  We want safety, and we often try to just stop feeling anything, because those feelings can be scary and they can hurt like hell.

But, to find our way through those things that initially hurt us, and to gain long-lasting healing, we have to dig back into those wounds, unpleasant as it may be. Wounds around our hearts can get hard and crusty over time. Sometimes we learn to protect ourselves by adding layer after layer of distractions, bad habits, and blame of others over those wounds to avoid feeling the rawness that lies underneath.  The problem is, all those layers are necrotic, and they are a fertile breeding ground for bitterness, resentment, fear, and hatred.

We are going to get hurt in life.  It’s inevitable and is a part of being human. What takes extreme courage is to allow for sacred wounds. I think sacred wounds are those that we self-inflict, or allow others to inflict upon us, as a healthy means to pursue healing.  Sacred wounding happens when we take a scalpel (maybe through therapy, or bodywork, or introspection, or meditation, or The Work, or tapping, or countless other modalities) and begin to cut away at the tough exteriors that we’ve built up around our hearts.

Slicing anywhere near old emotional wounds is brutal, but when done with safe people in safe spaces, it can be transforming.  Life and love, that are always within our deepest, truest selves, are suddenly able to start seeping out. They bring energy to those places within us that are struggling to breathe, struggling to survive.  And those places start to vibrate once again, and begin functioning as they were intended.  Over time, streams of life are flowing through those old wounds, where once it was stagnated in a toxic environment.

I once had several emotional wounds that I believed would never heal. They were just too deep, too infected, too complex.  I was terrified of any scalpel that offered to cut away the hard callouses that I had built up to protect myself. Fortunately, I’ve learned that the Universe is a good physician. It brings the sacred wounding I need when I need it, and the result has been more healing than I could have ever imagined. Sometimes I still resist sacred wounding, fearful of the ensuing pain from whatever scalpel is being laid to me. But when I can summon just a small amount of courage, and lean into the discomfort, I only gain more life, an increased ability to love, and the flood of light into the deepest, darkest, most hidden places of myself.

 

 

 

Disclaimer:  This post will likely not have anything all to do with science. Unless you consider the neurotransmitters in my brain that have helped me reframe and thus respond differently to Valentine’s Day than I have in the past.

I’m not going out tonight. I’m not getting flowers, chocolates, wine, teddy bears, or anything else colored red today. I’m not being romanced by anyone, nor am I pining away for anyone. I’m not listening to sappy love songs, and I’m not going to watch any cliche romantic Valentine movies.

And that’s perfectly OK with me.  In fact, I’m great with it, and I harbor no resentment or ill will or jealousy towards anyone who will be happily engaging in the traditional Valentine’s hoopla.   I think alot of the reason I’m fine with the current setup is that I’ve learned to change my perspective on what life brings me, and find the good out of what I used to categorically label as horrible.

There’s alot of people out in the world today who are hating Valentine’s or bemoaning the fact that Cupid must have been using a harmless nerf bow on them instead of getting it right and bringing them some great, true, faithful love. I completely empathize with people who aren’t having a great experience today, but I’d like to offer my own personal list of why I just don’t think Valentine’s is worth getting wrecked over.

Listed, in no particular order, except for maybe #1…..I’m happy to have a non-romantic Valentine’s day because…

1. I get to pick the bottle of wine tonight, and I don’t have to share.  It’s a Chianti, by the way…

2.  Meals at restaurants on Valentine’s Day are ridiculously overpriced and frequently underwhelming.

3. I am not a fan of the consumeristic, contrived expectations that come with Valentine’s. I mean really, how much do you have to spend on someone to prove your love?

4. If someone can only conjure up meaningful romance towards me on Valentine’s day, then there’s not much substance to our relationship to begin with.

5. Valentine’s day has always seemed to be a subtle game of comparison.  Who gets what, how big is it, how expensive is it, how novel is it… . it’s just one more way for people, especially women, to employ ranking systems.

6. I personally am more thrilled when someone cleans my kitchen  or randomly sends me an unexpected gift on another day, than all the froo froo that comes with Valentine’s. I don’t want jewelry…I want BOOKS.

7. Romance is fueled by obligation, guilt, or hormones. (Oh look, there’s some science!).  Not to say there’s anything wrong with romance and the sweaty palms and beating hearts that come with it, but the state of being “in love” is unsustainable in the long term.  We fizzle out after a period of time with the other person, and unless there’s some foundation that’s been laid beneath the hot romance, the relationship will struggle.  It’s much more appealing to me to have a person who comes through for me 75% of the time and completely spaces Valentine’s day than it is for someone to blow Valentine’s day out of the water yet never really gets to know me or be there when it counts.  Anyone can manage one day out of the year; the true test is the people that stick with you over the long haul.

8. I don’t get worked up over not having a fancy Valentine’s day because I am very well loved already. I have my tribe of people – the ones who have seen me ugly with bedhead and no makeup, the ones who have heard me swear like a sailor, the ones who know my deepest shame and worst failures, the ones who know my dreams and what I most fear, the ones who push me to be my best self, the ones who hold to me when I’m not a good friend and don’t love them back well.

The fact is, at some point we’ll all get ugly, we’ll all get saggy in spots, and maybe we’ll eventually stop making adequate amounts of sex hormones ,which will result in a lost interest in or physical ability to do romance anyway.  But the thing that stays is our capacity to connect with others on a deeper, more meaningful level than romance or sex can take us. To truly know other people, and be known by them, will always be more important to me than whether or not I have a hot Valentine’s date.

9. Finally, I am my own best Valentine.  I will never leave myself, I always look out for myself, I’m really good at picking out gifts for myself, it doesn’t take much to impress or amuse myself, and in general, I show up for myself when it matters. And when I get down deep to my core, past the ego and selfishness to my true self, I live and move and have my being in the great, good Love that connects all things.

 

 

 

There have been certain times in my life where the Universe seems to be trying to teach me about something.  Either that or it is just alot of random coincidence converging on me in a short amount of time. Two particular cases that really stuck with me were the topics of baptism and the book of Revelation, back in college.

It seemed like every time I turned around during my junior year, the topic of baptism would come up in church, in lectures, in random settings.  I could not get away from it.  I now know every baptism related scripture verse, every possible understanding of the texts, and have probably heard almost all of the possible jokes surrounding baptism-like, does it count if you’re baptized in a mirage?  Or, what if you drown while being dunked and don’t make it back out of the water before you die?

During the last half of college and for a while after, every time I turned around or visited a new church, it was all about Revelation.  Pre-tribulation, post-tribulation, amillennialism, amillennialism with moderate preterite tendencies, Jesus rapture or no Jesus rapture…on, and on, and on. In many settings, my being unwillingly thrust into another Revelation experience was preceded by (read this in a sing-song, Southern accent): “We’re going to be doing a Bible study on the book of Revelations!”  By the way, if you ever hear someone say the book of Revelations in regard to a Bible study, I can tell you with about 99% accuracy the specific content that will be covered and with what degree of literalism.

Was the Universe really concerned about my grasp of the various permutations in understandings of baptism and Revelation?  Meh, I don’t know. But I can say this: whenever I attend a church who announces they will be covering either of these topics, I will decidedly not be showing up those Sundays.

On to the point of this post.  I’m encountering another period where the same topic keeps showing up in my life from multiple avenues.  Maybe it’s the universe, maybe it’s just because of the tribe of people I hang out with, the books I read, the podcasts I listen to, etc.  This new idea that is hitting me from all angles?  The need to show up for YOURSELF.

So, last night I went on a date. It turned out to be a date with myself and my 16 oz Blue Moon, because the guy that was supposed to meet me never showed up.  Years ago, pansy, no self-confidence Julie would have been humiliated, feeling rejected, and completely anxiety-ridden about having to sit by myself at a restaurant. I would have told myself stories like: “He probably saw me from the window and took off.” “I bet he magically figured out from my online profile that I have nystagmus and he just couldn’t handle someone whose eyes involuntarily move ninety-to nothing.” “I probably screwed up again and miscommunicated about where and when we were supposed to meet.” “I’m a complete dork…of course things would go this way.”

In the past, I would have projected all kinds of stories onto the situation and ended up feeling horrible. But, because I’ve learned a thing or two over the last decade, and even the last month, and I have had people show up for me in life, this is how I responded to the situation: “Hmm, too  bad for him…I’ll see if some of my friends are available to join me.  Oh, they’re not.  Well, hey!  I get all the chips and salsa to MYSELF!” And I proceeded to chow down on the chips (which I’ll have to run off today) and enjoy my beer and….it was fantastic.  I thoroughly enjoyed my own company.

Last night’s no-show was a great exercise for me to practice showing up for myself.  Unlike unwanted insertions of more baptism and Revelation into my life that make me want to gouge my eyes out, I willingly embrace this learning to show up for myself.  Because, myself is all there really is.

No, this is not me being narcissistic and thinking that everything exists for me.  Rather, it’s about the three following ideas:

1. I’m the only one that will always be with myself.  I will never leave myself, even when others come and go
2. My ideas about other people are really just my projection of my own beliefs and stories onto them.
3. People mirror back to me reflections of myself.

Point number 1 is pretty easy to grasp.  We all know we’re stuck inside our bodies until we die…there’s no hopping around to other people, and we can’t really check out from ourselves.

Point 2: What we see and believe about other people comes entirely from our thoughts and perceptions about them. We can never REALLY know another person or their motivations.  We can only speculate about them based on our thoughts. And just because a thought comes down the pipeline of our brain does not make it true, no matter how true it might feel.  It is still biased and subjective on some level.

Point 3: Scientists frequently talk about mirror neurons in child development.  They suggest that children learn behaviors and skills by watching the adults in their lives and then mirroring it back with the help of specialized “empathy” nerve cells.  Anyone with children knows this phenomenon is true, both for good and bad.  It’s super cute when your baby mirrors back peek-a-boo, but not so cute when they mirror back the “God dammit!” that you let fly out of your mouth when the toilet overflowed from excessive toilet paper insertion.

People mirror back to us what we believe about the world.  If we see the world as malevolent and dangerous, we experience anger and danger from other people. If we see the world as good and abundant, we experience that abundance in our relationships and daily life.  It’s all a matter of how we perceive things and what thoughts we believe about reality.

Back to showing up for myself. If I’m going to be the only one who is certain of sticking with myself through it all, and my life is really just about the stories I project onto it, then it seems like I need make myself a priority. Obviously, I’m not talking about doing whatever I want at the expense of others. What I’m talking about is getting to know and value  MYSELF at the deepest level possible.

Our tendency is to worry about how others perceive us, and then mold and present ourselves in ways that will please them, or at least grant us some level of favor in their eyes. We frequently do this to the detriment of our hearts and betray our own core values. Which, when you think about it, is really kind of dumb when there’s no guarantee that those people will ever come through for you or stay forever, and what you think they think of you is probably a projection anyway.

The things I’m talking about here can feel kind of nebulous, and maybe won’t resonate with anyone.  The first time I heard these kinds of ideas I thought it was alot of New-Agey crap. But the more I observe my own life, the more and more I believe that it comes down to me.  Of course, I’ll pursue meaningful relationships, and I’ll do the best I can to really KNOW other people, and I’ll try to live my life in such a way that others are benefitted.   But…in my mind’s eye I’m thinking of an asymptotic curve (you learned about these at some point in high school math).  An asymptote is a line that a curve approaches as it heads toward infinity, but it can never quite reach that line.  My analogy is this:  we may be really, really accurate about the way things are and know about other people, but we can NEVER be completely accurate.  And so I am left with this: I am the asymptotic curve.  All I can really know is myself and where I am.  I can never completely know anything for sure outside of me. And so, showing up for myself, and really being authentic to my core, and loving myself, is all there really is.

Others will leave you, but you will always have you.  So, love yourself well, and make sure and show up every time.

I should recommend the book Loving What Is by Byron Katie.  If you pick it up, the first time through you will think she is a nutty old lady who does not have a firm grasp on reality. But if you hang with her, what she says about only having yourself in life will start to make sense.