October 2018 – By Anne E. Bachop
I’ve just spent the last couple of weeks in Florence—one of the oldest cities in Italy. There is
history everywhere—a history that speaks of power through grandeur, extravagance, size, and
genius.
I wondered how conscious the local people were of the environment surrounding them. Did
they remember the strength and stability this foundation afforded them? The richness of this
inheritance could be a source of many things and, as is my want, I turned these thoughts to
myself. How would I feel? How do I feel contemplating my own strength and stability?
How do I stand on the foundation of my success? Do I arrogantly feel that I’ve been through so
much that I have no need or desire to continue on a difficult or arduous path? I have definitely
felt at times that I’ve had my fair share of disciplined, internal searching and that it is enough. Is
the pride that I feel in my own growth and transformation laced with condescension? Maybe
the better question is when is it laced with condescension.
Entitlement is a fairly recent word in my vocabulary. For me, it speaks to a neediness I have
when I am afraid that I am not enough. This feeling of the right to power, I find, is often coupled
with my resentment or jealousy that someone else has something that I do not. How did they
do that, or get that, when I’ve been working so hard, and trying so much with far less to show
for it?
And then, in my most centered moments I find a humility sustained by gratitude. Here I am, in
this moment, an amalgamation of my greatest successes and failures and everything in
between. When I bow to this moment of now, I open to the spiral of life, that reveals
possibilities, potentialities and, dare I say, the perfection of the Divine that is my inheritance.
This is my strength and my stability.