I am the Commander-in-Chief

I’ve always considered myself a fighter, for many reasons: I always end up doing what I want to do. I accept advice from the few people whom I really trust but then I decide with my own mind. I don’t do something because everyone does it and I always choose the hardest path, never the easy one, because I like to test my own limits. And ultimately, the quote: “You need to make do with what you have” has never ever fitted to me. This has always been the thing that has created more problems for me …

It’s funny because if you meet me, my appearance suggests that I am a very ordinary person, but inside it is something totally different.

Time has helped me to change a lot, in the past I struggled and suffered because of the conditioning I had received. But that was in the past, now I own my life. A few years ago the quote: “You need to make do with what you have” was rolling around like crazy inside my head and not only there, also in my heart and my inner self.

The question was: do I really have to be happy with what I have if I know I can make things better? Here I was again, at a time of change. Three years ago my life fell apart, not just in a metaphorical way but literally: work, family, friends, all my points of reference were gone. Was God testing me? No, I was testing myself because I am the commander-in-chief of my life, not God.

As a fighter, I started to fight. I faced all my fears one by one. This required a lot of effort. I cried so much. I worked hard on myself. I suffered. I allowed people to step on me, and I discovered that I didn’t like it. I gritted my teeth. I regretted my decision to change, it was not supposed to be so difficult. I called myself into question. I prayed.

You know what? All this time, one of the things that hurt me the most was when Annibale said to me:

They step on you, because they think you don’t have personality.

We had a huge argument that day! I was mad! Basically, people think this about me because I am polite and well-educated when I express my point of view. I don’t scream to try and get my point across. I don’t feel the need to convince anyone but I keep my own opinion. For all these reasons, do people think that “I don’t have personality”? What he said, made me think.

My castle broke into pieces! I felt hurt! I felt hurt because I’ve never doubted my personality. I always thought I had a well-defined personality, surely not a huge ego but I definitively knew who I was. After a few tough years, in the middle of 2016, I started to lose my balance. My battery was low, I had no energy. I can be a fighter but even a fighter at one point needs to stop and breathe. I think this time life had hit me too hard.

That day, my master said:

Personality is to face things, not to appear in front of things!
When your personality is strong, you can look like a lamb; and when your personality is angry, you can look like a flower!

Everyday, you enter the scene of life and sometimes it is necessary to exit it in order to reflect on the development of the drama in which you are playing the main role. Occasionally, it is necessary to exit life and to stay in the wings for a while, to give yourself the opportunity to look at the event from another point of view. If you do not look at it from afar, you remain in your character.

Does it mean you are faking? Are you disregarding the rules? Are you disrespecting anyone? The answer is “no” to every question because when you are inside your personal home, your inner being, you are your true self. You cannot be a fake within yourself and not even with others. You enter the contest of life, developing your role in it, by showing your willingness. It does not matter if you feel tired or dissatisfied, always try to put a smile on your face, to accept, to share, to show your complete willingness.

You can build a valuable day when you take yourself out from the appearance, from the image, from someone else’s judgement, from prevarication, from egoism, from arrogance. If everyone lived life with this care and attention, each one of us would be able to live for what he/she is meant to be.

He was right. It took me some time to really understand the meaning of his words but now I know that I can stand up for my beliefs and be true to people in the same way that I have always been, because I am not faking it. That it is right to be polite and it does not mean not to have an opinion. That I will not allow anyone to think that a beautiful flower on the outside can not also at the same time be a damn fighter on the inside!

Credits

Image	Title	Author	License
	Inner strength	BesartaVuqa	CC BY-SA 4.0