Resilience|

Resilience:
1. The ability to recover quickly from illness, change, or misfortune; buoyancy.
2. The property of a material that enables it to resume its original shape or position after being bent, stretched, or compressed; elasticity.

Tonight, as I sit here contemplating life, I find my mind full of thoughts, my heart full of joy,struggle and my attitude being challenged. Am I out of line to feel this way?

It took me awhile to think of an appropriate title for this blog post. It was partly spurred on by a work evaluation I had last month. One of the character traits I was encouraged to cultivate in my life was resilience. It, quite frankly, did not come as a shock to hear this. I have always known myself to be an emotional decision maker. My feelings about certain moments in life guide me, empower me, but in a different setting can completely disable and discourage me.

As you know, I am the last child in my family to have found a life partner. You may be asking, "Why bring this up now?".

Over the past months,I have had countless people approach and with a reassuring pat say,"You're next!" "Don't worry, you will find your life partner."

I am writing about this is for two reasons.
1) Honesty is liberating.
2) To empower and encourage.

Here's the truth, plain and clear. When people say those sort of things to me, I understand that more then likely their intentions are pure and meant with no hurt. But what I do have a difficult time with, is that suddenly people think that my life will magically be made complete by finding a life partner. That who I am today, a strong, independent female seeking the best in her life, does not suffice.

And what makes the situation more delicate is that, I start to begin to second guess myself. "Am I ok being alone?" "Do I need to find someone?"

Maybe the root of this issue lies not in what we are saying to people, but our motivation and perceptions behind them. When you say a comment to me about needing to find someone, I have enough confidence to laugh it off and move forward. But what if you say it to someone who struggles with being alone?

Our words have life giving ability. Let's empower people, and encourage the stage of life they are in today. Seek the perspective of here and now, and maybe you will encourage a society to change their view of people being alone. And instead of a society of resilient people, we will have a society of respected people, in every stage of their lives.