You Should Stop Trying to Be a Better Person

A year ago, I spent two days in the Colombian mountains drinking ayahuasca as part of a spiritual ceremony. An experience that pulled apart every detail of my being and rearranged me in a new sequence. I wish that life became easier after the feat. It didn’t.

I could cry again. I spent most of my life hiding my emotions, but after hours of bawling my eyes out as the medicine guided me through scenes of the past, present, and future, seeing the faces of forgiveness needed and apologies owed, I could cry again. I was attuned to my emotions and no longer able to hold their weight. Sadness, resentment, and avoidance were replaced with serenity, compassion, and patience. I began to see the light in everything and everyone, and became desperate to love them brighter. And my own light, once just a flicker within my depths, grew to permeate my aura and seep into everything around me. Including the darkness. Where light illuminates light, harmony exists. But where light illuminates darkness, it destroys.

In the darkness lie our insecurities, our pain, and what we are ashamed of. It’s the basement where we hide the things we don’t want our guests to see. The place for the junk we plan to sort out later, but rarely do. When you lead with light, you will bring out the best in people and then the worst — like unintentionally stumbling into someone’s basement with a torch, highlighting everything they’ve condemned about themselves, tripping over discarded dreams, discovering dust-ridden boxes of fears, abandonment, and anguish. It will look familiar because you’ve kept a messy basement before, too. You will want to help them sort through the clutter and throw out the old things, but you will not be successful. People who have never felt accepted cannot recognize unconditional love, people who live at war do not accept peace offerings, and people who fear rejection rarely meet you with vulnerability.

You may not be loved more for growing into someone kinder, more patient, more compassionate, or more empathetic. But I can guarantee that you will be disliked, misperceived, and judged. And you will feel alone. Sometimes you will want to retrieve darkness from the depths of yourself, because your basement isn’t pristine either. You will want to let yourself lose your patience. You will want to yell profanities when you have been pushed to your limit. You will crave vindication. You will believe it is better to have thick skin and brick walls than to wear your heart on your sleeve, and everyone else — a dagger on theirs. But when you reach a certain point in your healing journey, the light will almost always be triumphant.

As your light grows brighter, your influence quiets. Often, it is so quiet that you never hear of it. The lover you were soft with becomes more gentle towards their willful child. The friend you gave compassion founds their new friendships on vulnerability. The parent you forgave, gives grace to their mother. But your lover wasn’t gentle with you. Your friend didn’t give you vulnerability. Your parent never apologized to you.

The reward for personal growth comes in the form of inner peace and reassuring calm. It is what grounds you in a world that feels increasingly unfit. It is knowing that every human journey can be boiled down to the pursuit of unconditional love, and being someone who can offer that. It is the blind hope that the love you give isn’t for nothing, that it lives on with purpose in everyone that you share it with, even if you never get to watch it blossom.

If you are awaiting recognition, if you seek praise, if you are in search of validation, then you should stop trying to be a better person. It may never come.