A Modest Attempt at Discovering Clarity.
It’s as simple as taking a good look inside.
When I asked myself about what exactly clarity is, one thing that came into my mind was that clarity is a curious thing. It is of course a sense of clearness, but in what sense, I had to take quite a few minutes to think it through.
In the process of everyday life, every aspect that makes up who we are is constructed upon our clarity about ourselves and about the things around us.
The more sense of clarity we have within us, the more we will learn to value our life by trying to make the wisest decisions for ourselves. We will learn to value the things that transcend the tangibles: time, our surroundings — people and environment — and the things that we believe in.
Being aware of all these things would guide us in figuring out our purpose in life and the path we should follow to pursue it. By knowing our goals in life clearly, we would have some sort of guidelines in going through our everyday life. We would value our time more — how we spend it with each passing day, whom are we spending our time and surrounding ourselves with. Of course we would want to be surrounded by the people who bring out the best in us, who help us to be the better version of ourselves, those who we care enough about, who make us want to voluntarily bring positive impacts to their lives, out of love.
On an even bigger scale, we would want to make use of our time by contributing something, anything, for a good cause or ten that reach into our conscience.
Causes that make us feel like we have a responsibility as a resident of this world, this planet, to somehow try to fix it and make it better, to try to contribute in maintaining humanity, or at least to maintain, or maybe even restore people’s faith in it.
Well first of all, before we get to all those noble and honorable deeds, we have to get a good grip on the idea and reality of who we are. To preserve both humanity and the planet, we need to start with ourselves. Sure, sometimes it feels easier to just skip to the bigger picture and care about everything else but ourselves. We may not even notice that we were doing it. It sure feels nice to bring positive impacts in other people’s lives. It sure feels so good to be able to speak out and stand up for the things that we believe in, to live with the fact that we are contributing something good to humanity.
However, the truth is, when I did this kind of things, there was a time when I felt like all these actions were some sort of an attempt to escape from dealing with the real thing — which is myself — and to feel better about myself for being capable to work on bringing the slightest good change in whatever tiniest community in the world that is existent. There were times when I felt like I needed to be significant enough, and to be significant enough, I felt the necessity to go for something that is bigger than me.
Even so, that’s not all that there is to this whole issue. It is hard to admit and say this out loud, but really, sometimes it is just easier to focus on helping other people than to look into ourselves and see if we needed some mending or fixing as well.
It is much easier to be kind to other people rather than to be kind to ourselves.
The thing is, if we can have a big enough heart to be noble and to care enough to be a hero for other people, for the world even, why can’t we be kind enough to not be so hard on ourselves all the time and to actually care enough about ourselves to embrace all the things that make us, us? Trust me, once we have learned to accept all of our flaws, to embrace ourselves for all that we are — beauty and flaws and everything in between — we will gradually learn to appreciate all the little things in life, all the little things that we find in other people.
Accepting our flaws does not mean that we settle with it.
Accepting our flaws means that we know ourselves good enough to be aware of the spots where there is still room for improvements, and to fill those spaces. We need to be able to balance between accepting our flaws while also working to improve them at the same time. And if we are gentle enough with ourselves, we could start to learn to embrace who we are, to acknowledge of our good traits that might not always be visible to the eyes, and to finally realize that we are worth it, to know what we deserve and refuse to settle for less.
All these little discoveries about ourselves would bring a big impact when it comes to interacting with other people, with new people. We would start to become the kind of people who try to look deeper and to see beyond the things that are palpable. We would not be quick to judge. Instead, we would look for reasoning and backstory of how things turned out the way they are, how people come to be who they are. We would appreciate everyone we meet, we would see that everyone is worth it and we would want them to know it. What is a better quality in the humankind than being a person who is willing to listen, understand, and accept other people? Seeing that it all starts by practicing on being kind to ourselves, what could be a more effective way to change the world than by changing ourselves.
By being kinder to ourselves, we automatically add the number of kind people in the world. Obviously.
But hold on. I never said that the number is singular, that the only person we add to the equation is just ourselves. People who are kind to themselves would also be kind to other people. And people who receive kindness from others tend to be inspired to also be kind to other people, too. It’s like a domino effect; or take it this way. The versions of us who are kind to ourselves are a drop of color, a good color. Our surroundings are water in a glass. This drop of color drips into the glass of water, infusing the water with its color just like that, just that easily. And guess what? So is kindness. Kindness, just like that drop of color in the glass of water, is influential. It starts with a single little drop of color — it starts with ourselves.
Before we jump and dive in headfirst into the ocean, we need to get a grip on ourselves.
We need to make sure that we are ready to become someone who is needed by the people around us. In a world full of noises, we need to start with listening to the voices inside of us, own it, and then maybe other voices around us would start to sound familiar; or even better, we can help people to find their voices. Start small and slow. Start with ourselves. No one is too small to bring a good influence. No one is insignificant. You matter. You are important. You are significant. You are on your way on bringing a good impact to the world. You are on your way on transforming the world into a better place. I am going to need you to listen carefully: you start with you, because you need to be ready for the people you love to need you. You start with you, because you need to be ready for the people whose causes you care about to need you.
All these things written in this article is the sense of clarity that has struck me: to be clear about my purpose in life by first being clear about myself, and let it go from there. I have come to realize that I don’t need to look so far. I just need to start with myself; start small and slow, and enjoy the process. I wish that each and every one of you discovers your own sense of clarity and hold on to it because I believe that what we believe makes us who we are.
Edelweiss is a writer, thespian, and music director. She mostly writes about Broadway discourse content analysis and personal growth on Medium and Instagram. On her day job, she writes about creative marketing for Garis Temu.
