Athena Tan

It is so hard to pretend that lots of things do not matter and should never have. It’s been a long time since I told myself to get over things that I have shoved on a pedestal in my mind; that I have constantly treated like a special sculpture and buffed and polished all its edges.

I now think that once of the ways to self-heal and one of the most important ways to respect our process towards self-healing would be to stop the flow of resentment towards ourselves, regarding certain things that we regret doing. In fact, perhaps stopping ourselves from showering negative and adverse attention on regretful situations is a way to add some positivity to our lives as a whole.

Tiny existences. I go the phrase ‘tiny existence’ from Kina Grannis’ newest song—all her songs are amazing and heartfelt and I could gush about them for hours—IN THE WAITING.

What are we waiting for, truly, in terms of forgiving ourselves? We’re living our lives suspended in the air, ready to cry or sigh or blame or strike out at other parties if things go awry. We’re suspended in the air, a bunch of atoms we are, human beings who could be affable instead of being awful at confronting our own mistakes. Maybe we need to take a step back.

I’m going to tell myself that; I’m going to tell myself to take two giant steps back and properly hold up a mirror to a scenario which I found myself doing something that I sincerely regret, and try and reflect as much as possible the occurrences in that situation. We like to loftily throw the phrase around – LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES.

Are we truly learning from our mistakes?

In restrospect of the past year, with the increase in demonstrations that go against the good of society, such as hate-speech and violent acts committed due to misconceptions and missing links between humanity and appreciation + respect for every person on this planet…I had truly believed that ‘learning from our mistakes’ would mean to write it all out, raise awareness for an issue that was interlinked with the subject matter of that writing, and consequently “educate” people on this issue.

I see now that we can do more. We can do more by not skipping the vital first step of learning from our own mistakes first; we can do more by respecting ourselves first, forgiving ourselves first, truly understanding ourselves and accepting our own flaws first, before heading on and joining many others in stopping larger societal issues.

Tiny existences.

The first tiny existence are the voices that creep into our heads and tell us to constantly cry over the regretful things we have done yesterday  morning, last week. This tiny existence warns us not to ever step out of our comfort zones again, because we might repeat the same mistake, because we might be unable to forgive ourselves if we ever get into a similar, shattered relationship.

The second tiny existence are the pockets of oxygen we give ourselves. Pockets of our day should be kept away just for us to cherish. when we’re feeling sad, down, ashamed, humiliated, hurt, it’s important to remember that we are our own person who is able to tuck ourselves away into a “pocket” where just us and only our beating hearts exist. We then take in a deep breath of oxygen—we allow ourselves to breathe.

We allow ourselves to be whole again. We’re forgiving ourselves and once we get pass the tiny existence of harmful voices with the help of another tiny existence of our “pockets”, we’re able to do more for one another.

❤

Featured image from IN THE WAITING music video.

P.S

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for Kina Grannis’ music.