Inspiration

I have been perusing my favorite sites, reading some of my old poetry and typing line after line then throwing them away. I was diligently looking for the muse that used to electrify my psyche. Where is that commodity that lit the fire within my superego. It seemed that this inspiration was just beyond my grasp and no matter what I tried I could not get close enough for it to touch my soul one more time.

As I was looking at some of my old thoughts, I ran across one that seemed to bring it all into perspective for me. Once; some years ago, I wrote "If you can't find yourself, you're not looking deep enough within, or reaching high enough toward the stars." Hmmmm...maybe I found my muse after all.

Could it have been that easy? Should I have been reaching deeper inside to find that inspiration? Has it been there all of this time, laying dormant within my subconscious mind? And to think, I have been chasing it around the net all this time.

I have always been a true believer of the saying "Before anyone else can love you, you have to love yourself." But with all that has been going on lately, I seem to have forgotten that bit of wisdom. I had forgotten that I can create my own destiny and that I only had to look within myself to find that elusive muse that I had "lost" in the recent past. I had been so busy feeling sorry for the sickly "old" woman that I have become that I forgot to love myself for the intelligent, loving, spiritually blooming and yes, beautiful woman that I have become.

All of my pain, medical problems and procedures and the weight gain only making my arthritis worse. I had forgotten that I am still the most important person in my life. That my own thoughts and feelings should always weigh the most in any decision that I make. But most importantly that as long as I am true to myself, even my bad decisions have helped me to grow by learning from those mistakes.

I had been feeling homesick for the last few weeks since rediscovering Sheila as the true being that I am. I decided that I needed to reconnect to "Me" as I had been in the past since that was part of my life that helped to shape me as I am now. To do this, I needed to locate some of my school friends once again.

I sat down at my computer and began typing in names from school to Facebook, also I typed in Shelby High School and class of '80. I had tried these searches before and didn't think I would have much luck, but suddenly I found a group from Shelby Sr High in the 80's with only a few names that I recognized. (It was a start anyway.) That led to adding one, then two, then four more, etc friends requests that I sent out to people I knew.

I accumulated friends on my list quite fast actually. So many friends that I knew from "home" in Shelby. Many of them no longer living there either but are just as hungry to find out what is happening in Shelby as I am. Others still live in Shelby and are eager to tell us what has been going on around our old hang-outs. All of us eager to let the others know how we have shaped each others accomplishments in this existence.

It has been fun seeing where they all are in their lives. Their families, children and grandchildren, their jobs and homes. Finding out about the causes that they champion and the entertainment that interests them. Then thinking back to my childhood and comparing what we all dreamed for our lives at this time. Some of us have achieved our dreams and some are doing things that I never expected to find them doing.

Hundreds of people have shaped each of our lives throughout our growth. From our birth through adolescence and into adulthood; (and even beyond into old age), we are changing. Everyday our lives are touched by others, many of whom we call an inspiration to us. We say that we have tried to fashion our lives after them and we may well have let some of them shape our morality to a small extent. However, the truth of the matter is, we are first our own inspiration and must let the love we have for ourselves shape us into the human being we need to be.

Always be true to yourself and then others will be true to you as well.

Until next time...Sheila