The Pretendings
A four year old girl runs through the grocery store, eyes wide, frantically searching, tears rolling down her cheeks. She finally sees him, races to him and pulls at his pant leg, her eyes pleading him to bring himself down to her. The stranger bends down and she hugs him.
“What did I do to deserve that?”, said the man as a smile came over his face. He looked up and saw the girls mother standing behind her, relieved she had caught up to her daughter. A confused look grew on the mother’s face as she witnessed this strange interaction.
“Your the only person in the store who can see me”, said the girl to the man, in a matter-of- fact tone. Her tears had now subsided and she wore a calm and confident look on her face.
“I do see you. And you see me”, reassured the man.
“Why is it that others can’t see me?”, queried the girl.
“It’s not that they don’t see you, little one; it’s that they don’t understand what they see, so they make pretend you are something different than what you are, that way, they can understand what they are looking at”
The girl stood there, pondering the words of the man.
“How can I explain to them who I am, so they can see the real me?”, asked the girl.
“We cannot explain to others who we are. We must only be who we are”, answered the man. “Above all else,” he continued, “do not become the pretendings of others. As you grow older, your desire to be seen will become stronger and you may choose to compromise who you are and start to become a little bit as others see you. When you do this, you will be rewarded by the attention of those you love and you will feel seen. This is a trap. It is not YOU who is being seen, rather, you are becoming a puppet, you are losing yourself and becoming the pretending of others. The more you become the pretending, the less you are who you were designed to be. The more you become the pretending, the less others can see the real you, and the less YOU can see yourself”. The man paused and re-asserted to the girl, “We cannot make others see us, we can only see ourselves. When we are true to who we are, through love, others will begin to see us of their own free will”
“I understand”, reassured the girl.
“This is a process ever human has been through, the becoming. From the moment we are born we are encouraged to connect with pretendings so that we may engage in this world, a world of illusions, where everyone is a pretending. Many spend their whole lives in the fog of the dream, while some try to find there way back to who they truly are, rather than be disguised as a patchwork pretending doll.”
“How can I help?”
“That is simple. Be who you are. Pretendings are passed from one to the other. If you stay who you are and refuse the pretending, the one who offers the pretending to you has the opportunity to realize that the pretending is an illusion, one which they have turned themselves into. This affords them the opportunity to disassociate themselves from that pretending and become more aligned with who they truly are”
“I can do that”, asserted the girl.
“You are doing that now”, agreed the man. “I must also tell you that there may not be many who choose to disassociate with their pretendings as this evokes a great fear within them.”
“Why?”
“Because they believe that if they disassociate with their pretendings they will no longer be seen and will not exist in the world of their loved ones, as you felt a moment ago. This is a lie. The deception of the pretending is that it promises you the light of expression, while in reality, that light is at the heart of who you are. If they can overcome the fear of being lost without their pretendings, they will be guided back to themselves by their own light, a light of which we are all part of, in which we all see each other, as one.”
