*3 Life Lessons I've learned in song, of course by the beloved P!nk*
1. All friendships and relationships are not meant to last forever. There was once upon a time when I believed that calling someone your best friend meant that person would always be a part of your life. During that time I also believed that when someone said they loved you, it also meant they would continue to love you through all the changes you both would experience through life. Fortunately for me, I woke up one day from that foggy slumber and realized that most friendships are seasonal. Including some that I have offered myself. This awakening also showed me that many relationships are merely a series of interactions in which we learn things about others at the expense of being forced to learn more about ourselves. Many that I've dated taught me how to love myself, how not to allow others to treat me, and how to treat others. Listening to "Who Knew" reminds me of the tragic ending of a friendship and tragic ending of a relationship that happened around the same time in my life. If someone would have told me then that my relationships with those two people would end, I would have never believed it. Simply because they said forever, and I believed it.
2. Know who you are and lean not on someone else's understanding of you. For if they leave, who will define you? When I became a new mother, I feel like every other title I had was lifted from me. I had totally forgotten who I was as a person. All I could focus on in life were the things I had failed to do (at the time I was a fresh college dropout) and the things I was afraid I would fail at (which was being a great young mom). Being that I was so "in-the-dumps" about myself and who I was as an individual, I allowed my relationship at that time to define me. I was a stay-at-home-mom and housewife (mind you, without the title) who, after listening to the opinions of others, believed all I was capable of doing was cleaning laundry, cooking dinner, and preparing Enfamil formula. And because my relationship with my boyfriend was still fresh, he did not know exactly how to give me the acceptance and validation I needed as a new mom. I stayed at home, I kept away from old friends, I avoided family, and I gave up. People said negative things about me and I believed them. Until one day, as Iyanla Vanzant says, my soul just opened up. I went back to school, I found a new job, made new friends, and even gained a new outlook on life. But to most I was still so-and-so's girlfriend. And that title consumed my entire being. So much so, that when I and so-and-so broke up, I did not know who I was. That was a turning point in my life. I had to start from the bottom up, getting to know myself, learning what I liked (and not things I just accepted because my man liked them), and what made me unique. So what I was no longer so-and-so's girlfriend? I would learn how to fall in love with myself and decided I would define myself! And most importantly I learned I did not need a man to do that!
Notice how Pink was talking about her husband at the time, yet they worked it out and are still together?
Well let's just say I know all about that!
3. You get what you're given, it's all how you use it ~Pink. Each of us is uniquely made for our own individual purpose. That is why it is so important to learn lesson #2 and know who you are as a person. For if you don't know who you are, you will continue to compare yourself to others you admire and become less and less satisfied with yourself. You will begin measuring yourself by your standards of them and will get disappointed every time. Though we as women don't discuss comparing ourselves to other women, we do it often. And I am guilty of it as well. There was one point in my life in which I really admired one of my friends. I liked the way she dressed, the way she wore her hair, and the way she carried herself. I admired her so much that I began to wonder why people weren't as drawn to me as they were to her. I began doubting myself and feeling inferior around her. And though it took me a while to figure it out, I realized because I had grown to feel inferior to her, I had began to "dim" my light around her. My once bubbly personality was diminishing before the very eyes of my peers all because of a thought I allowed to take root. After reading a self-help book (I really wish I could remember which it was), I started taking notes about things I was good at and accomplishments I had achieved. In essence, I started to realize I had gifts just like she had gifts. I just wasn't giving mine a chance to blossom because I was too busy coveting hers. And in my time doing this, I was in a way denying my own. From that day on I made it a point to focus on my own purpose in life and to stop running from myself.
