I Am My Own Home: I Listen To Myself, I Take Care Of Myself And I Renew Myself

I am my own home:  this is why I open the windows to ventilate, for the toxic wind to go away and for the breeze that smells of hope and fragrant illusions to enter. I am my own home, I am my precious refuge, and sometimes I am not there for anyone because I am looking for a shelter for my privacy: corners to listen to me, to take care of myself, to heal myself …

If our internal self were a home, many would have a very poorly maintained one. And others would have a well-decorated facade, colorful roof, beautiful fireplaces, sophisticated grilles and picture windows framed by elegant curtains.

“Homes are built to be lived in, appreciated, and not to be contemplated”

-Francis Bacon-

However, in case we did wish to enter one of these stately mansions, very often we would find dilapidated walls, battered columns, lonely living rooms, empty rooms that smell of sadness, and lots of dark corners, where the light never entered. Indeed,  if we all represented a house, we would be obliged to take care of it,  to transform our home into a beautiful comfortable space, free from shadows, closed rooms and gaping cracks.

We are our own home, let’s face it,  we are our own refuge and this exceptional structure that is constantly growing. So let’s learn to take care of this magical space which cannot be sold, cannot be rented, but protects itself.

The refuge you seek outside is within you

George Bernard Shaw said that life is not about finding yourself: it’s really about knowing how to create yourself. So, anyone who chooses to embark on a journey of research in order to achieve a goal, recognize their limits and find the essence of their own personality will be mistaken. Because everything you want to know is not on the outside but in this internal space that produces wonderful fruits when we take care of it.

In addition, there is an incomparable fact that we have been able to perceive from time to time, especially at this stage of our adolescence when we live with the door open, where we wait to see what life brings us, what happens. outside with its din, its flavors, its sounds and its swell. When we live disconnected from our heart, from this internal beacon in which our values ​​and identity shine, we always have the feeling that “something is missing”. That there is a terrible void in our home and that we have to fill it with anything.

So, almost without realizing it,  we let the first person to pass into the home of our own being, we give them the keys to the front door,  we offer them the living room sofa and even the secret key of our wardrobes and wardrobes. We do it with ingenuous innocence, without knowing that there are thieves who take everything from us, ruthless marauders who ravage everything they find: our self-esteem, our strengths, our virtues, our dreams and our illusions …

Taking care of yourself, listening to yourself, building yourself up is not an act of selfishness

Having a home made up of spacious living rooms full of books that contain infinite knowledge is not an act of selfishness. Having a home where there are no closed doors, cracks, corners inhabited by shadows and darkness is not an act of vanity. Enjoying a garden with amazing flowers, beautiful shrubs and deep-rooted trees is not something superficial. Because succeeding in having each of these things requires time, willpower and a delicate tenderness.

“Light hurts those who live in darkness far too much.”

-Eckhart Tolle-

We live in a society that conditions us to believe that self-love is an act of selfishness. However, after that, we almost have to read self-help books to find out that the idea isn’t right, that closing the doors of our homes to what we don’t like or what we don’t. don’t want to be narcissistic. This means that we are courageous, that we show self-esteem and honesty, that we sign a commitment with ourselves to guarantee ourselves a good self-esteem and a good- to be in a world that has gotten used to creating frustrated people, people who don’t know how to be happy.

Albert Ellis already said it in his time: our society often teaches us to hurt ourselves. Therefore, we need to put aside everything we have been led to believe so far and start thinking and feeling in another way, to remind ourselves that there is a fragile and helpless being who needs attention. , care and recognition: ourselves.

So let’s take this trip back to our inner home to sweep away those beliefs that limit us, to enlarge these hopeful rooms, to dust the curtains of all these internal conflicts, to clear the pipes of our emotional wounds. Let us sow seeds of illusions in our gardens and keep the keys to our house in our pockets,  because it is these, in the end, which will open all the doors to our happiness …

Images by Victor Nizovtsev