Permission To Exist

I've been thinking about the gap between who I am and who I want to become.

There is a version of me I can picture quite easily.

Healthier.

More successful.

More confident.

More accomplished.

More at ease with himself.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to grow.

But I've begun to notice something uncomfortable in the way I hold that future version of myself.

I sometimes treat him as if he is more worthy than the person I am today.

More deserving of respect.

More entitled to confidence.

More acceptable.

Perhaps even more lovable.

That is difficult to admit.

Because the person who has to do all this becoming is the person standing here now.

And there is a strange paradox in asking that person to do the work while withholding from him the very things I imagine the future version will deserve.

We ask the person we don't fully accept to build the person we believe we'll finally be able to accept.

I've thought about this before in terms of acceptance.

But acceptance can sound reluctant.

Love is a stronger word.

Can I love the person I am now while still wanting more for him?

Not the finished version.

Not the version who has sorted everything out.

This one.

The one with visible imperfections and private disappointments.

The one who has sometimes wondered whether he needs to be more accomplished, more certain, more together before he has earned the right to stand confidently in the world.

I recognise that thought in myself.

Even in my work.

A quiet question of whether I need to have my own life more resolved before I am entitled to sit opposite somebody else and create space for theirs.

But none of us arrives complete.

And perhaps the work of becoming does not require pretending otherwise.

We seem to understand this more easily with the people we love.

We do not usually make our love for them dependent on their performance.

We can see their flaws, want better for them, challenge them, worry about them — and still love them.

We want better for them because they matter.

Not so that they can finally matter.

Why should the relationship with ourselves be different?

There are plenty of expectations around us about how we should look, what we should have achieved, how successful or confident or together we should be.

We absorb those expectations.

And then, at some point, nobody else needs to enforce them.

We do that ourselves.

That may be the harder thing to see.

Because when we make our worth conditional, we begin waiting for permission.

Permission to be confident.

Permission to be seen.

Permission to put our work into the world.

Permission to enjoy ourselves without first fixing ourselves.

Permission, in some subtle way, to fully occupy our own lives.

But whose permission are we waiting for?

The uncomfortable answer may be our own.

That realisation feels bigger than simply accepting ourselves.

It asks something more fundamental.

What if the person I am today does not have to earn the right to be loved by me?

What if I can forgive him for being unfinished?

What if I can stand beside him rather than continually measuring him against the person he has not yet become?

There are still things I want to change.

There are still standards I want to live by.

There is still more I want from my life.

But perhaps growth does not have to begin with rejection.

Perhaps I can love the person doing the growing.

Perhaps I can stop postponing respect.

Stop postponing confidence.

Stop postponing being seen.

Stop postponing the parts of life I have quietly reserved for some future version of myself.

Permission to participate.

Permission to be visible.

Permission to be imperfect.

Permission to live fully while still becoming.

Permission to love the person I am today.

Permission to exist.