Growth Takes Time

I had a realization today that I am way to hard on myself. I read as much as I can to learn how to be the best person that I can become, but when I fall short I often give myself a mental battering. I don't plan a tomato plant and expect that it prodcue perfect full gown fruit overnight so why should I be any different? When I had my children and held them in my arms, I can't describe how I felt about them. I loved them unconditionally. They could cry, spitup, and change my entire life yet I felt their worthiness, their value, and the importance of them being themselves. Then as time goes on the outside influences come and pretty soon you see someone else's child talking and yours isn't and you wonder why, you see the next child crawling and yours isn't and you worry something is wrong. This cycle continues right on up to where we are now. Before you know we are no longer valued just because we are who we are, but now it is in comparison to who we are in relationship to who everyone else is. What if you took away everyones professions and the material things they surround themselves with? What would we have? I asked myself this question, I took away in my mind all that I have and asked myself what do I have? It was an amazing experinece to look at yourself and to see yourself separate from all these things. I could see my strenghts, my weaknesses, and my value as a person. Then I did this with as many people as I could that I knew. Honestly, there were some that I thought I had not valued them enough and there were some who I was valuing way too much. Some hide behind their incomes, others behind their educations, but the result is the same, artificial worth. I am not opposed in any way to wealth or beautiful things what I am opposed to is the value put on it when someone has it or doesn't have it. I think in nature we see the involvment of all things needed, there is sunlight, bees, fertile soil, all working together to grow magnificant things. I wish were able to look at people this way. All of them needed and playing an important part of growing .No one any more important or worthy than any other. For if there were no students there would be no need for teachers, and if no one was ill there would be no need for doctors, and if there were no mothers there would be no children and so the list goes. So who is really more important, who is really more worthy than you and what ever your contribution to this world is? Every one of us is an important needed part of the whole. Here in lies the problem because we are forever looking to justify our worth by the standards of what others are doing or have done instead of being the individual unique being that you were meant' to be. As I held my first child I knew their worthiness and loved them, yet they had done nothing. Doesn't that mean that we are already worthy and already loved and that there is nothing to prove?