Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “real.” Use it with a prefix and/or a suffix, or just as it is. Have fun!

Keeping it Real

As I get older, I like to think I’ve become more real, but what does ‘real’ mean? To me it’s a matter of aligning yourself with what’s important – the activities, people and environments that truly make you tick. It wasn’t always this way though. When I was in my twenties I was desperate to fit in, to do what others wanted and what society expected and as a consequence, I was angst ridden and irritable much of the time. I felt a need to meet someone and get married by the age of 30 with the view to having children before 35, and the years leading up to that age were stressful as I felt an urgency to ‘sort things’ out before it was too late.

Then my dad died. I was immensely sad that he hadn’t lived to see me ‘settled down’ and happy, and I was also frustrated and finding it impossible to focus on one job, as I couldn’t decide what I really wanted to do. Consequently I was teaching, translating and working as a massage therapist, all at the same time. It was crazy. But strangely, after my dad’s death, I started to slowly calm down. Although I still wanted to meet someone, I felt less pressure to do so and ten years on, even less. I’ve let go of the need to have children and accepted what’s come my way. This has made my life so much more enjoyable and real as I’m no longer ‘fighting’ things. There’s a line in the Desiderata;

‘Whether it’s true to you or not, the universe is unfolding as it should.’

This is what realness means to me. It’s acceptance of ‘what is,’ rather than how you feel things should be. I’ve finally committed to writing and cut down on work so I can fit it into my day. I have less money, but I’m immensely happier. My life feels real to me now.

This was my post for SoCS