projecting...

I am loving Travelin'Oma's blog and inspiration.
It inspired today's assignment:


I was unzipping my little girl's sweatshirt when I took note of her icy fingers and toes. She wasn't hot and in need of losing a layer. I was. I've noticed I do this often. I call it projecting, though I don't know if that's quite what that term means or not. No matter, it's natural to project what I am feeling to her. If I am sweaty, she must be as well. If I am cold, likely she is too.

I think we see in people what we are. And when we don't, we're shocked. I see the world not through rose-tinted lenses but through my own eyeballs. Distorted? Not to me.

Hawthorne's Great Stone Face, I think, is whatever one projects onto its expression. Ernest became noble because he was born noble, and worked all his life perfecting such. Ernest saw in the face what he valued. Someone else could have seen something different. Perhaps even power or control and become just that. To me, Hawthorne's Great Stone Face represents our ideals. We become our ideals.

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I value kindness, compassion, humor, goodness. And will work all my life perfecting such. Isn't it good news? Isn't it the farthest reach of optimism and good attitude to believe we will eventually become exactly what we want to be? This is positive thinking.

I am positively sure of who I am. And who I am not. Say what you will, world. Come and go. I feel grounded. I feel powerful. I feel strong.

I will not let others control me. Or my own negative thoughts. I affirm to myself aloud, "I am a good mother." "I am a good person." "I'm doing what's right for my family." I have lately had to stand very strong. And I did it. And I'm doing it. And guess what? I am so very proud of that.

I want to become the perfected version of what I see in The Great Stone Face.
I want to see the goodness in everyone else's face.
I want to project positivity and goodness to the world,
onto every face I see, stone or otherwise.

I choose to see the good, even in myself.
I choose a positive attitude.

I choose everything.

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How am I actually supposed to become my ideals? Does it just happen? Is it magic? I think it happens just like it did for Ernest in Hawthorne's story. I think Ernest became what he saw in the face because he spent his life
looking for those things in others.