What Others May Think of Me

Dear One ...

I hope you can hear this. [You're not one in my experience to pay too much, if any, attention; much less to heed my advice.]

I really don't live sealed in Amber. To be some your quaint memory of better times forgotten on the back of some shelf. 

You can't make me responsible for the image you created of me in you mind. You don't like that image. It seems so. What can I do to change your mind? You made it up in the first place. What can I do?

So here it is. When you hold someone outside your heart — for whatever good reason and justification — that part of your heart is not available to you or to the ones you do want to love.

So, for your own sake alone, if you may have anything against me ... give it up. Please, not for my sake. [Though that would really be a miracle for me.]

There's so much wisdom I've learned around that point. I'd like you to consider it. Maybe, as a first step, simply to look at it. 

Set aside for a moment how this may plug you into feeling "pressured". [In my experience around that feeling/thought of being pressured, when that comes up I find it's worthwhile to examine myself to see whether it's just plain old obstinacy to hold on to a long held ignorance. Especially so if it's a position on which those around you give implicit, if not outright, agreement.] 

Well, what I can do is say these things to you. It's such a double bind to be closed off from a loved one's circle with no way to break through. Not even any listening ear. In fact, most exasperating, to see that any attempts to do so only entrench the situation; add more bricks to the wall.

As for me? What other people may think of me is none of my business. That's a bit of sage understanding worth pondering.