My Day Five of The Four Agreements Cards. Express Your Own Divinity

The card for today is under the Agreement: Always Do Your Best. Today's image is of a woman with long dark hair and wearing a red sleeveless dress. She is sitting in a meditation pose in the center of a giant lotus like flower that's white and purple. Beneath her are circles of green and behind her head are circles of yellow. I take it the green is the Earth and the yellow is the Sun. The words are in a light cursive and say, Express; your own divinity.

The back side of the card says this: You don't need the acceptance of others. You don't need knowledge or great philosophical concepts. You have the right to be you, and express your own divinity by being alive and by loving yourself and others.

Sigh. The editor in me wants to fix that last sentence. That comes with being an editor in that you see mistakes in everything. It's hard to read for fun without finding those tiny things irritating. In this case, I haven't lost the message here. It's one I needed to learn and still struggle with occasionally. How do you not have philosophical concepts when you have an opinion? We all have those. I believe the card's author means you don't need to be Socrates or have a PhD in Philosophy to believe in yourself and the goodness of those around you.

Having the right to be you is God given in my mind. It's those people who don't think you have that right who are the problem. They're the ones who have a mental image of themselves and want everyone else to change and be like them. People expecting the world around them to change to suit themselves and everyone else be damned are hard to like, let alone even love. I've lived long enough to know these folks need to be loved but it's damn hard to give it to them. They usually want something in return. I admit this is something I'm still working on.

Some days I wake from a night with not much sleep; others I'm sick or my body hurts. Sometimes my soul hurts. Depression hangs around, blocking out the sun with its dark hands. On those days, it's very hard to love myself. Those are the times when a card like this comes in handy. I may just write the back message on my bathroom mirror and leave it for a while.

So that's it--a couple of my philosophical concepts and opinions. Thanks for sticking it out until the end of this post.