Awakening in English

This morning I was facilitating a class about the challenges and lessons my student and I are now facing in our current lives. The great thing about discussing topics regarding personal growth is that the beautiful sayings and texts taken as reference take on another dimension when they are translated into our everyday lives, when they move from theory to practice. So at one point, we were talking about not fitting in with certain everyday crowds such as the other moms at our children's schools (sounds familiar?). My student was telling me about a mom that was even so bold as to tell her that the reason the other moms kept her at a distance was because my student (let's call her P) "lavished glamour." At first she didn't quite understand what bold-mom had meant, after all, P doesn't dress up to pick up her children from school and she is not the standard cover girl look-alike. Still, in our conversation we agreed that her clothes always match, she accessorizes nicely, and she is quite pretty. The conversation got me thinking that P is a woman who irradiates beauty and light confidently, whereas other body-conscious people (such as a younger version of myself) hide as much as they can if their mirror does not reflect a Cosmopolitan magazine's image. However, we still had to resolve how it is that the other moms, instead of taking her as bright real-woman role model, feel intimidated by her. We couldn't but conclude that when your light shines, some get tanned while others need to wear sunglasses.


Cheers!