I've been spending a great deal of time around the monk house recently, and I've noticed my old thought patterns have started to pop up. Pulling up to the house today, I thought, "Maybe I'm spending too much time here...Maybe they don't really like me that much...Maybe I'm a burden to them..." Thoughts like this were once part of my daily life, something that even a year ago would keep me from asking a friend to hang out or going to an event. They were never debilitating thoughts, I still had friends and connections, but I would never spend more than a few hours a week with any given person.
Now I'm spending quite a bit of time around the same people, and the thought patterns have started playing again in my mind. They are the well worn tapes of a person who spent a good chunk of their life distrusting their self. I don't pay them much credence anymore, but they still echo in the back of my mind.
I wonder what it would be like if they were not there. Who would I have been closer to if it were not for these tapes? How would my life be different? But then I realize that there is nothing wrong with my life now, that I have been brought by the grace of God to the place I need to be. I just have to keep remembering that the tapes of my yester-years are not the tapes I choose to play today. They echo, but they do not define. Instead I set my life to a new tune, a new tape that I hope to etch into my brain, "You're a good person. Trust yourself."
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