Those Crumbs are for the Birds
The joy of getting lost
I have never been a fan of fairy tales. For the most part, I enjoy stories that I could imagine actually happening. Maybe that is because when I was a young child, my parents decided that they were going to tell me the truth about Santa Claus and the Easter Rabbit. While that is something that I am quite grateful for, I do think it spoiled a few stories for me.
However a few days ago, I was enjoying a pleasant outdoor and I couldn’t help think about the story of Hansel and Gretel.
If you are not familiar with the story, Hansel and Gretel found out that their Father was going to take them to the middle of the woods and leave them there to fend for themselves (what a great Dad, huh?). They decided they would leave breadcrumbs on the path so they could find their way back home. Unfortunately, the birds came by and ate the crumbs they left behind and they were lost.
Why is it that so many of us rely on bread crumbs to get them back to their comfort zone when they feel lost. The bread crumbs are actually just bits and pieces of ourselves that we choose to share with the world. They are precisely fired arrows drawn from the safety of an Ivory Tower. Instead of being our true selves and living the life we choose, we are conservative with what we share, only splurging when aware of a defined goal. Why are we so afraid to get lost?
From a personal development standpoint, getting lost is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. Being lost is a stressful, unpleasant, and frightening thing. It is the ultimate “out of your comfort zone” feeling. But we can use this to our advantage and uncover new areas of our internal world map.
Let the world know who you are. How do expect to find people that genuinely like you for your real traits, personality, and actions if you do not share them?
The problem with this is that if I decide to shy away from my true self and just give the world bits and pieces, or crumbs of myself, when my ideas are accepted, I can say, “Oh, see, people like me.” When they do not, I say to myself, “Well if I told them how I really felt then they would like it.” With this mindset, there can be no honest feedback. Feedback is vitally important to growth. Whether good or bad, all honest feedback can be used to improve yourself or your product.
Perhaps this just comes down to acceptance? We all just want to belong to something. Many are afraid that the world will reject them so they decide to just give out enough crumbs to satisfy the demands of modern relationships.
It reminds me of the song from the TV show Cheers, “You wanna go where everybody knows your name.” How true is that?
When I was an early teen, I used to sleep with my TV on throughout the night and I always turned it on Nick at Nite because, let’s be honest, there were never any scary commercials. I remember watching Cheers and every episode, one of the characters named Norm walks into the bar and he says, “Good afternoon, everybody.” Then everyone yells, “Norm!” I thought to myself how great it would be to feel that accepted when everyday I go to the same place and everyone smiles and gets excited to see me.
The thing is, Norm was not hiding his true self. He may have been doing that to the rest of the world. Maybe that is why he always seemed so relieved to walk into the bar. He knew that he was going to a place where people accepted him for who he was and he could take a break from having to pretend.
Embrace the difficulty and vulnerability that it takes to let the world know who you truly are. Live a life that is devoted to your happiness and your curiosity. If you take the chance to do this, you will not have to retrace bread crumbs if you get lost.
Getting lost is how you find new opportunity and new paths. That is all a part of the process. Every time you go to a new place, you are technically lost because you have never been there before. It is alot easier to stop and ask for directions than worry about if the birds ate the crumb trail back to where you started. Besides, who wants to go backwards? Keep going forward, past that place that seems so frightening, onward towards the next opportunity.
“Somebody’s interested in everything. Anything you be interested in, you will find others. It’s absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don’t like, in order to go on doing things you don’t like, and to teach your children to follow on the same track. What we are doing is we are bringing up children and educating them to live the same sort of lives we are living, in order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life, by bringing up their children, to bring up their children to do the same thing.” — Alan Watts
Good things to come,
Luke Blackburn
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