SECOND BEST LIFE

SECOND BEST LIFE

I grew up poor; I’m not ashamed of that, however it is only with the wisdom of age that I can now see how diligently I was hardwired to expect second best in life. The two phrases “It’s good enough” and “It’s just as good as the real thing” permeated just about every aspect of my life, from where I shopped for clothes, what brands of food I bought, even to my first husband. “It’s just as good.” Story of my life.

My life hummed along fairly nicely, I married at 20 to an honest, hardworking man that would always provide for me, never mind my secret dreams of someone with ambition and passion, I was safe and that’s what mattered. However over the years I began to notice just how much I had settled for: a rundown house, a job in a supermarket instead of my own business, you name it. Once I took a relative of mine grocery shopping with me; every time I reached for a name brand product she would admonish me and advise me to get the cheaper brand, with those dreaded words “It’s just as good.” So I ended up loading my trolley with home brand crap that I didn’t like and would never eat. Afterwards I pondered as to why, as a grown woman who earned good money, I had been unable to tell my aunt that I didn’t like the cheap brand and simply put the name brand product in my trolley. I know that from her point of view she was just helping me to save money, but it was also about something deeper: if I could afford to buy whatever brands that I wanted and she couldn’t, then that would make me different to her, it would put a distance between us.

It was only with the beginning of the demise of my marriage that I started to see a spiritual counselor and I began to examine why I thought I deserved the crumbs in life rather than the cake. I began to see patterns and identified a strong theme in my well-meaning family, by not expecting the best you were less likely to be disappointed and with the entire family raised with that mentality we all stayed more or less on the same playing field. I began to ask myself the question: Did the universe really think that I only deserved second hand instead of brand new? Was that all I was capable of? This was a hard one as a voice would shout in my head “Yes, that’s good enough” but behind that voice was another, the size of a grain of sand that whispered, “You deserve the best of everything.” It’s a strange concept for me: to see myself worthy of the top shelf rather than the bottom drawer; it’s an internal battle to turn that automatic voice off and allow abundance into my life because that’s what it comes down to: allowing. Now allowing isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do; it involves faith in something other than yourself and usually results in endless doubts and second-guessings. I recently heard a great analogy about manifestation and allowing specifically; when you go to a restaurant, you order what you want and trust that it will be brought out to you, right? Well it’s the same thing with manifesting; you order what you want and trust it will be given to you. It is getting easier however and ironically I’m finding that the more of the best I receive into my life, the world isn’t ending and my family still love me.