Becoming the sun.

"He's not the sun. You are."

If you saw the last Grey's episode with Christina leaving, you know what this quote is from. Referring to the relationship between Meredith and her McDreamy, Yang gently reminded her person of her place in the world. And it worked. Grey channeled her inner sun and stood up for herself and all that she wanted out of life.

I love this quote because I feel like it is so reflective of how we operate in life. We have our "sun". The thing that our hearts and minds revolve around, that dictate who we are and what we believe to be true about ourselves. It's usually very draining and extremely blinding to reality. And we can't see around it. We devote all our energy to our sun, forgetting ourselves in the midst of it. Making ourselves smaller. Less bright. Less beautiful. And we let it happen again and again. We watch that sun set and rise and convince ourselves that it's the way it must be.

And we become discouraged. We feel out of control and powerless to the patterns that run us. The sun seems so powerful, too strong to overcome. And in all honesty, we don't want to try. We are afraid that if we do we will have to acknowledge that what we have been running after is not as significant as we have made it to be. That it does not fulfill us. Rule us. Shape our days and nights. And that's terrifying, because who are we when we can't define ourselves by what we do?

Our suns fail us. They do. And they always will because they were never meant to be the center of our universe. Who we are was never meant to be dictated by the things we accomplish or the people around us. By our suns. In the same way that we could never exchange earth for the sun, it is absolutely useless trying to shove anything but ourselves into the role that we were meant to play in this life. We are valuable. We cannot be replaced. Why do we spend so much time trying to be someone we are not? Paying attention to the things that are unimportant? The things that are mere stars in the vastness that is our own galaxy?

People fail us. Professions fail us. We fail ourselves. But that is a component of the things that happen, not the core of who we are. We do not have to listen to our suns! We do not have to keep circling around the things that make us smaller, that diminish our own light and keep us from being all that we were meant to be. I'm not trying to say we should be narcissistic. I am trying to say that we have a choice--a choice to believe that we are brilliant and powerful and capable of changing the world. Of taking hold of our worthiness and believing it over the things that will eventually pass away.

Let your sun rise today. Push everything else back into place. You were meant to be you--shine bright.