The Direction of Intention

27.

Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

A memory: I am deeply invested in my pain. I am in my early thirties and I’m certain the world thinks I am a loser. I am not walking a path that others recognize and I have not yet learned that the only person who needs to recognize my path is me.

Quinn can see through the mask that I wear. He is older and wiser and recognizes the predicament in which I have placed myself. He has no patience with my attachment to pain and laughs – he is an excellent trickster.

One day while in downtown San Francisco he takes me by the arm and guides me into the financial district. He points to the top of the Transamerica building and asks me if I can see the top floor. I do. He tells me that the person occupying the top floor, amidst all of his or her status and success, does not know what they are doing, either. They are making it up just like me. Everyone does. He tells me that everyone is as clueless about life as I am, we are all pretending “to know.”

He has penetrated my mask and I am embarrassed. He laughs (again) and tells me that there are over 6 billion people on the planet and I am the only one that really cares about what I think – particularly about myself. He tells me that, like me, everyone is so consumed with angst over their assumptions about how they appear to others that no one has the time or energy to truly think about anyone else.  He asks me to consider the possibility that my opinion of myself might be vastly more important than anyone else’s opinion of me – and suggests that it might be worth my time to ponder why I think it is necessary to value other people’s views of me over my own.

He was right. It was worth my time.

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