A Proud Life
The World Needs More Love Letters published an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote I loved today:
Seeing this made me think about something I read last week that has stayed with me ever since. A blogger (Hands Free Mama) wrote a post called The Important Thing About Yelling. Here’s the part of it that deeply resonated with me:
“My oldest daughter had gotten on a stool and was reaching for something in the pantry when she accidentally dumped an entire bag of rice on the floor. As a million tiny grains pelleted the floor like rain, my child’s eyes welled up with tears. And that’s when I saw it—the fear in her eyes as she braced herself for her mother’s tirade. She’s scared of me, I thought with the most painful realization imaginable. My six-year-old child is scared of my reaction to her innocent mistake. With deep sorrow, I realized that was not the mother I wanted my children to grow up with, nor was it how I wanted to live the rest of my life.”
Like Hands Free Mama, I’ve definitely yelled at my kids. I’ve most certainly blown up at people I love. I absolutely fumed at my husband this week for forgetting one little detail about the weekly schedule. And those are not proud moments. They are massively UN-PROUD. But they ARE the moments that can lead to the biggest change. They’re the turning points…the ones that feel tough enough to make us want to start over…in a small way or in a big way.
So coming back to this quote, I love it for a few different reasons. First, I like the word pride because only each of us knows that makes us proud. It’s not about a judgement or an external view of how our lives should be. It’s just about a feeling. Our individual feeling. Second, I like that these few words are a simple reminder that we can always change, no matter what. Each of us deserves to live a life we’re proud of — whatever makes us uniquely proud — and that life can be re-defined any time we want to re-imagine it.
What in your life is making you feel proud? And where are you ready to clear the slate?
wellfesto 