Humble Pie

I had a boyfriend once who said I thought too deeply for him. I wasn't sure whether or not  to take it as a compliment or a criticism, and now I see that it is indeed both. I like to think and to analyze. I like to improve myself and the world around me. I also have an obsessive personality. When something speaks truth to my soul, it consumes me. It replays in my mind and becomes the foundation for my thoughts and actions. This obsessiveness, this passion, fuels my motivation. It helps me finish big tasks and solve hard problems. It helps me feel more acutely, empathize more genuinely, and love more intensely. When the truth sets me free, I want to liberate everyone I know. I want to shout it from the mountaintops and invite the ones I love to swim with me in this new understanding. But sometimes this obsessiveness can turn into a soapbox. It can hurt feelings and sound judgmental and preachy, but it is really just a display of misdirected love. I have been humbled into this realization over the last couple of days, but as my sister said while I tearfully confided in her, "humility makes you feel alive." And that is the purpose of life; to learn, to change, to progress, to grow--to grow so tall that you need some humbling to make you small again--and then you feel alive.