.: grand and insignificant :.

I am going to let you in on a little secret. It's something that we all know, but very few of us live in light of. Everyone all around you is a fraud. Everyone! Everyone you know and experience throughout a day is a fake, one person after another. Everyone is compensating and everyone has compromised in some form or way. Everyone is pretending... and not one of us has the courage to admit it. We live in a world that believes that grandiose knowledge or unusual ability makes them greater than everyone else. And because we have been living according to that faulty standard, we have all been drawing direction for our lives from this one grand lie.

There exists this sense that a few have some sort of greater advantage over everyone else... but the truth remains that we are all equal. And everywhere you look, there is a people who are terrified of convincing themselves of their ok-ness, of even their uniqueness, and their equality with everyone else (partially because they don't believe it, and partially because those who supposedly have the advantage wouldn't have them to realize it). The reality exists that so very few of us truly knows ourselves, so the result is one great universal compensation, paired with the deepest desire to never let anyone else find out that they too are living according to the fundamental secret.

It's not just like some of us are cowering. All of us are entrenched in some sort of fear - it's just that some of us hide it far better than everyone else. All of us mask and dismiss some of the most beautiful parts of our strength - it's just that some camouflage their acts of dismissal and masking with better success than others. All of us are walking with some sort of limp, all of us are cowering in terms of some dynamic of our life, and all of us are stooping to compensate for something that we desperately feel that we lack. We are a people that clings to any advantage we might have over another individual, as if it promised life itself (believe me, I know how some of these moments feel closer to that reality than others).

The greatest awakening comes as we realize that wisdom is simply a comparative term, for all of us is wiser with regards to something in contrast to another individual. We must come to the deepest sense of everyone's fallenness and depravity, even at this stage in the story of history and eternity. All are turned in on themselves, which in turn makes us all co-equals before the Father. No one can boast of being in some sort of unique position, nor can they claim that they possess a unique perspective on anything, for all territories of existence have been found, explored, mapped, mined, and plundered. And though so very few of us will ever fully enter into this reality (myself included), there is nothing that requires that we continue to nurture a conscience that holds us back. In the end, there is really no reason to allow fear and reservation to temper our vision, passion, or advancing in what we have been called to.

If we can at all find a way to, we desperately need to find that rewiring in us, and sever it with a spirit that is nothing short of ruthless. And the only way that we will ever know that we have succeeded in this is that we will be liberated from giving a rip what another person thinks about us, for all that anyone might say is intrinsically tainted by personal preference and perspective. Who is anyone to tell us what matters most, for everyone is proven biased, confused at best, compensating in ways beyond even their own understanding, and bloated beyond measure.

I, for one, could use a nice long break from living according to this lie!