Where are You Holding Back?

Most of us spend our lives trying to do great things so that we may become accepted by our family, friends, and the culture where we belong. Acceptance is so precious a reward to our achievements that is sometimes much highly billed than monetary reward. We fear rejection as a consequence of our actions and deeds not acceptable to those dear to us. We seemed to lose our directions and good disposition including our self-belief when we encounter rejections of any kind. The feeling of being accepted and loved remains our basic psychological needs and consciously or unconsciously regarded as an end to our motives. How brave a man or a woman could be to stand by his principles and beliefs when there is not even one sympathizing? And so a rightful act lost its relevance when nobody subscribe to it and the person would not pursue any more if he/she cannot stand being not wanted. It is lonely up there, in fact, very lonely. And because of this much sought emotional need, we missed to be ourselves and our desire to do things we really wanted but instead try to figure out what are the things that we should do to please our loved ones and superiors and conform with the norms of our cultural affinity. Pleasing everyone is a tedious job but going against the current is even more tiresome.

From our childhood we were already trained to do things which are acceptable and right to our parents or else they will become upset and most often than not imposed punishments. They seldom asked us what we wish to do. They would tell us to go to sleep when we still wanted to play or asked us to perform a trick to amuse their friends in spite of our resentment. What a child can do to go against the will of his parents? As teens, the worst part of child-parent relationship, where the parents are always in the stage of shock on their children’s behavior while the kids are in series of trauma. And so we seek the comfort of our friends where we say, we found acceptance, understanding, and love. We missed to say how much we loved somebody because we are afraid that he/she would not loved us back. We punish ourselves to marry someone we do not love at all for the sake of convenience and practicality, or simply because we cannot go against our families’ disapproval.

Our fears rooted from all these constraints implanted in our mind. We are afraid to do things we wanted because we have had painful experiences we thought would never end. We are not free because we carry so much loads that are not even necessary in our journey. How much we hold back in our lives equals the weight that pulls us down that would not allow us to unleash the inner beauty in ourselves and the uniqueness in each one of us.