I'm Starting With Me

There is an old fable about a dog carrying a bone across a bridge. As he looks down, he sees his reflection in the water and is startled by what appears to be another dog with a bigger, better bone. In his greed, he opens his mouth to grab the reflected bone, only to lose the real one he was carrying. In chasing a shadow, he lost the substance and walked away with nothing.

This story mirrors a deep human tendency. We often lunge at reflections of what we think we want: the perfect relationship we see on social media, the idealized partner, or the life that seems more desirable than our own. We become experts at the external, asking about credit scores but not character, what someone drives but not what drives them. We show up well-groomed but spiritually wounded, impressive but emotionally immature, and wonder why our connections fail. The truth is, the most important piece of any relationship puzzle is you. Before we can build anything healthy with someone else, we must begin the sacred, and sometimes slow, work of becoming whole ourselves.