Our Inner Terrorist

There has been a lot about terrorists in the news this week. The events are troubling for so many reasons. First, to have freedom of speech threatened is disconcerting. (We realize how blessed we are to have the right to speak our minds, no matter what our political leanings.) We almost did it when The North Koreans leaked demeaning information and threatened to cause injury to anyone who showed the spoof about their government. Sony pictures first seemed to respond to the threats but later decided to show the picture anyway. Similarly the political satirists in Paris were killed because their views were deemed to be sacrilegious. 

Then to come to understand that the terrorists have been recruited on the internet is heart-breaking! What is going on in a young person's mind, to want to die a martyr? I truly do not understand it.

But upon further reflection I thought about our own tendencies to answer the call of  the inner saboteur who tells us that we are evil, wrong, flawed and bad. That is the voice that tells us that we are not  good enough, that we need to "fix" the unfixable. It is the voice that causes us to hide our true feelings behind an addiction, to hide our vulnerabilities, and to live in constant fear.

When we succumb to advertising whose purpose it is to make us feel insecure with our smell, our shape, our weight, our hair, our clothes and even our shoes, we are recruiting an inner terrorist. We have done a pretty good job as a society.

There is a current popular song that sums it up. Colbie Caillat, "Try." She sings that we don't have to try so hard.

Just the way you are and just the way you are not, you are enough.