I began life as a very sensitive child. My emotions were large. But I suppose that is true of most youth. Still, mine were large enough that it troubled my father and caused my mom to say things to me like “You are so melodramatic” or even “Don’t be so melodramatic.”

I felt that everything around me was alive and had personalities. Rocks, trees, flowers, my Teddy Bear, my barrettes all spoke to me in one way or another.

I was creative. Always drawing something. Or collecting wild flowers and arranging them and then painting them in water colors. As early as seven years old I was writing poetry. Okay, most of it was what you’d call doggerel, but still, I was expressing myself with words.

Mom was religious. Dad was not and neither was I. But I was always spiritual. I always felt a deep connection to the world around me.

As I got older, I started to lose all that. My best guess is that it was because my father wanted something else for me. He revered science and reason and thought of himself as a logical man. He was a father of the 1950s and all that implies.

His dream for me was that I become a physician. And so my very spiritual life began to take a back seat to science. I began to question whether or not Teddy actually waved good morning to me each new day. I questioned what the trees and flowers said to me. And pretty soon, I began to think that Dad was right. He’d tell me it was all in my head. Meaning none of it was real.

I lost myself.

I began to find myself again in my twenties when I started studying Kung Fu. Our sifu would tell us about our chi and he fully believed what he had to say about it. A grown man, he himself and scientist of sorts, believed in the mystical.

And then I personally experienced the expression of my chi in some fairly dramatic moments. It set me thinking.

It’s been a long road from there to here and now. I sometimes find it sad that it took me so long to come back to myself. And there are still times, days, moments when I doubt my own truth. But eventually, I get back to where I need to be.

This whole world that we live in is alive. Everything. And it is all connected … all parts affecting and informing all the other parts. And it all speaks in one way or another. And what it says to me is beautiful. When I can hold that close and true is when I find the most contentment.

It’s when I feel the most me.

Images courtesy of Learnloft and SUCCESS Magazine, respectively.