I think the most important promises are the ones we make to ourselves. Because when it really comes down to it, the only reason we care about what other people think of us is because it affects how we think of ourselves.
It’s an illusive beast, solidity of self. Pride is easy. False humility, defeating. But solidity of self is something more. Something deeper. It’s not just confidence, or accurate knowledge of ones abilities, though these are indicators of its presence in an individual’s life, it’s a knowing. It’s The Knowing. It’s the culmination of belief and the result of faith. It is the catalyst of hope. Solidity of self is such a vital aspect of life, yet there are so few lives in which it rests.
Because it is not as simple as a winning streak in life, or following through with the promises you make to yourself, these things alone will only lead to cheap counterfeits of the actual thing. How many of us have fallen into the intoxicating pit of false ego?
No.
You see self-solidity, the knowing, in its true unadulterated form, can never come from any amount of self-confidence or achievement. We can only be solid when we are anchored in something more solid than ourselves. We can only be confident in our abilities when we are confident in the One who gave them to us.
All things come from a source. Including us. Everything that I produce comes from me in the same way that water comes from a tap. The water flows out of the tap, the tap is what we see, and we may think of a tap when we think of water, but the tap is not the source. Water comes from the earth.
I am not the source. But I am confident in the source.
I am confident in Him.
This confidence is not ignorance, or arrogance. It is not ego. It’s not self-conceit or striving; I posses self-solidity because my true solace is found in that which is not myself.
When I realize this, the idea of self-image feels stale. Irrelevant. Others opinions about me seem almost a laughing matter. And keeping promises to myself no longer feels like a moral obligation. It feels as natural as falling feels to rain.
Hopecloaked 