deserve

“You are sitting on the earth and you realize that this earth deserves you and you deserve this earth. You are there–fully, personally, genuinely.” — Chogyum Trungpa

Deserve.

What a loaded word!

I have been thinking about it since starting “The Wishing Year” by Noelle Oxenhandler, which I finished a few days ago. The book has stayed with me, ever since. One of the things she explores in the book is deservedness. Who deserves to have their wishes fulfilled, and who doesn’t? And if one is not deserving, how does one become deserving? And how might carrying the very story that one is or is not deserving keep someone from having a wish fulfilled?

I like playing with this idea, because like most people, I have been trained by society to assume that I am automatically not deserving and that there are things I need to do to prove my worth. Note the choice of “things I need to do.” It’s assumed, when the very concept of deservingness is even brought into the picture, that deservingness is about action, not about being. Deservingness carries with it the idea that something must be earned.

Anytime I notice a rigidly held and limiting belief in myself that I realize to be completely and totally wrong, I always feel sort of giddy, even if I notice that little critters pull at me not to give up the belief entirely. Deservingness is such a belief. Even though little critters are quick to jump in with a chorus of reasons why someone (like me) must earn the right to be happy, must “pay their dues,” or must work hard to ensure that I stay deserving, some knowing beyond all knowing within me knows that it’s bullshit.

You are deserving. I am deserving. We are all deserving.

Even if no one can “prove” it to me, I know that at a core level, it’s true, and so it’s the space that I try to live in.

It was something of a shock to me when I realized that I did not walk around with the belief that I deserved respect. It was sometime last year that I fully grasped this. I was allowing students, family members, friends, random strangers, etc., to speak to me in ways that were disrespectful or to treat me in ways that were disrespectful. The comments or behavior would be endlessly frustrating, but I wouldn’t say anything about it because I didn’t believe I had a right to do so.

I was not conscious of this belief; it was simply something that I felt but had not taken time to identify as a lack of respect for myself or valuing myself. If someone flaked out on a commitment, I would be frustrated but I would think things like, “Oh, well, I’m supposed to be understanding. I’m supposed to be flexible. I’m supposed to take things in stride. I’m not supposed to have expectations.” 

I think that all of those things are true (just without the “supposed to” part; I prefer to substitute “can make a choice to”), and while I also want to hold understanding, flexibility, and lack of expectations in the palm of my hand, I also want to hold a place of honor for myself and being authentically true to myself. 

(Not the simplest thing in the world, huh?)

I also held a lot of fear that the people who loved me conditionally would no longer love me if I stepped into a space of asking for what I really desire.

There are all of these loose threads that I notice myself thinking about as I write this. Like, first I want to write something that tells anyone reading this how lovely they are, how deserving they are. Then I want to write indignantly about how I Stood up for myself! and Started speaking my truth! 

And then I settle on this phrase: “I make no apologies for who I am.”

I mentioned in my last entry this fierce lion RAWR that was coming up for me around working on me to get to a place where I feel fully in integrity around the choice to become a mother. And with this sentence, “I make no apologies for who I am,” I feel that RAWR in me again. It’s not a gentle RAWR, nor is it an aggressive, in your face, “Back off!” RAWR, so much as it is this sense of being very grounded in my power.

All of this, all of my life–it’s all journey, so I learn and learn and learn and fuckitup and learn, again (or re-learn). I realized a few months ago that I was walking through much of my life with this very scared person running the show. This scared person was doing so much of the talking that it was difficult to even get that she was in there, to distinguish her voice as a scared, frightened voice rather than seeing that voice as “me.”

This scared voice was sort of walking around with my life going, “Um, you know, if it’s okay with you–if it won’t offend anyone–could I, you know, make the decision to live my life the way I want? I promise I will try REALLY REALLY REALLY hard never to upset anyone else. Oh, wait–so you don’t think that’s right? Oh, you think I’m arrogant, selfish, awful, stupid, rude–I am so sorry. I really am! I swear I never meant to do [that]. Will you please forgive me? I promise it won’t happen again.”

As soon as an accusation of wrongdoing was lobbed at me, as soon as someone else was triggered, I was off and running, fearful, trying to tiptoe around and not set anyone off. I was aware that I resented it massively, and I was aware that I was not living powerfully, and I was working on how to communicate better with my Coach, but really I was working with what I knew intellectually rather than what I’d integrated.

In little bits and baubles, in a two-steps-forward and two-steps-back kind of way, I see how this lion RAWR of power in me is becoming more and more integrated. 

The lack of RAWR was showing up in my role as a teacher. For years, I have been afraid of my classes not going well and thus, I have committed Teacher Sin Number One more than once–giving people a lot of third and fourth chances, and then watched as that spiraled out of control. All it took was seeing a student give me a look like “God, what a bitch” and I felt this sinking feeling in my stomach, because the part of me that wants the student to be invested in the class and see that I care fought with the part of me that knew I’d set up a rule about attendance or late homework for a reason, and that as soon as I started bending those rules, I was out of integrity both as a teacher and with myself.

Lion RAWR says: Here are the guidelines of my classroom. I put them out there not to be mean, but because I want to run the best class that I can. If you don’t like those guidelines, you’re totally in choice to find another class. Additionally, I will lovingly support that choice. I will not shift who I am or compromise my integrity. (And I make no apologies for that).

The lack of RAWR has shown up in my friendships. I saw friendships where I knew I wasn’t giving enough and I kept pushing myself to give more because I felt I “should,” and I saw friendships where I saw that someone else was not giving/opening, and I chided myself for “wanting too much.” 

Lion RAWR says: It’s okay to want connection with others (and it’s okay for them to not want connection with me). And if they don’t want to connect with me in the same way, I don’t have to make apologies if I decide that I need to move on to find what I am looking for. When I sense that I’m not giving fully because I notice I don’t feel an authentic connection, I’m not a bad person. I am who I am. I need not apologize for that.

I saw lack of personal power in the way I allowed people to speak to me without respect. I accepted the accusation that if someone’s disrespect upset me, they were right: “I’m too sensitive; I shouldn’t let things bother me.” If they told me that they had a right to be mad at me because I had done XYZ, I took that as the Word. If they said that they wouldn’t speak to me respectfully because they were too angry and how could I expect them to not be angry, I went right along with it.

Lion RAWR says: I make no apologies for my feelings; I am not “too” sensitive. I accept that others may be angry with me while also knowing that I need to be spoken to respectfully. They can have their anger. What they can’t do is take it out on me.

With writing, photography, and creativity, the lack of RAWR showed up as constant comparisons of what I was doing to what others were doing, constantly setting up better than/worse than scenarios in which I almost always came out the loser.

Lion RAWR says: You show up and do the work that feels most authentic to you. They’ll show up and do the work that feels most authentic to them. No one is the winner/loser; we’re all people responding to our creative expression and because the world is such a varied place, you’ll find people who resonate with your vision and people who resonate with someone else’s vision.

I am stepping more and more into a space of making no apologies for who I am. This isn’t a “fuck you if you don’t like it” declaration. It is a declaration of being unwilling to continue self-hate in the form of apologizing, hoping, begging, punishing, pleading, if-I-just-try-harder-I’ll-be-better. 

It is a path of realizing that the response that feels best to me when faced with someone saying “Just who the hell do you think you are?” is…”I am magnificently human!”

It is realizing that whenever an accusation of imperfection is thrown my way, I have the power to just own and accept that yeah, I’m imperfect.

I’m working on me.

The hard part about stepping into this space is that until I’ve fully 100% claimed “me,” without apologies, the critics still have their sway. There is still a part of me–the part that is hooked into concepts like deservingness–that can start to question myself. It’s difficult to know that I am walking the world doing my best, and there will still be people who question that.

And it’s difficult to be someone who steps out from the pack. Doing this makes one visible. Stepping into a space of not apologizing for who I am because it doesn’t serve me is the kind of thing that can just make someone more vulnerable to attack. I’ve already felt that, more than once.

Isn’t that sentence–”Just who the hell do you think you are?”–a tough one to swallow?

For me, it can be–but I notice that it’s an easier one to swallow when the answer is…”I’m a magnificent human being!”…even if it takes courage to be willing to say that. 

However I live, I want to do so without resentment. The first person I don’t want to resent is myself, and whenever I go against my integrity or dull my flame and agree to live anything less than 100% fully alive, resentment follows.

Where do you place limits on yourself for what you deserve? Where do you notice others can “put you in your place” when you try to occupy a bigger space? Where do you notice you putting YOU in your place? Where’s your lion RAWR, that deep grounded growl of power in your gut? What would it take for you to claim yourself as magnificent?