When 'Low Maintenance' Becomes Self-Denial: Rewriting the Stories We Tell Ourselves About Wanting More

Standing on the railing looking out on the city I left nearly two years ago, I realized a conclusion I'd drawn that is likely holding me back. 

Maybe it was my focus on being her this week...

Maybe it was being back in Houston, in a hotel with a sweeping park view where I wasn't in the thick of things but where I could see beyond clearly...

Maybe it was my declaration that I would be open to whatever this trip home offered me...

Whatever it was, the realization hit me clearly and lovingly. 

I like nice things. 

But I've pushed those things away, or not let myself have them because having/wanting nice things would make me ‘bougie.’

"I've made having nice things bougie, and I've associated being bougie with being difficult..." I said to Dave.

I took a deep breath, looked out on the city, locking eyes on the high-rise where we used to live, and added, "and superficial." 

My mom loves nice things. For her, it's both what she deserves and a sign for all the world to see how important she is. 

But for me growing up, her loving nice things was both the source of every opportunity I had and of quite a bit of drama. 

On one hand,  because my mom saw herself as superior, she raised us to take up space. She taught us that eye contact and a firm handshake would take us far. That we belonged in any and every room. How do you get invited into that room? Look like you belong. Or in real terms…look like money. 

That guidance helped get me into the city’s finest schools and enabled me to feel comfortable in conversation with the wealthiest people.

On the other hand, looking like money and having/being sufficient with money are two very different things. 

Looking like isn't being. That incongruity created a gap, a hungry hollowness that could never be satisfied. It just consumed more and more. 

The result? 

• Money arguments. Bills unpaid. New cars on E. Looking like a million bucks on the outside but strife, frustration, and the sparse crumbs leftover from feeding the façade on the inside. 

Standing on this beautiful deck, I could feel the longing for more of this. More nice things, more feeling taken care of, more of what money affords. 

And perhaps because I'm practicing allowing my desires to exist, choosing to believe that my desires are a gift/guide to all God has allocated and assigned to me...

Perhaps it was stepping foot into my baby sister's home that she'd hired a designer to decorate beautifully, and feeling loved and held versus squeezed and suffocated...

Perhaps it was being higher up that gave me a clearer perspective...

I'd made wanting nice things being bougie, and being bougie means being difficult and shallow. 

I couldn't even say the word without the corners of my lips turning down in disgust. 

I'd gone out of my way to not do anything that might make me "look like" money. 

As a result, I'd inadvertently swung the pendulum hard the other way, making myself super low maintenance, the extreme opposite of difficult.

But in this moment, the mis-association no longer felt true to me even if I couldn't wrap my mouth around the word. 

"I need to call it something else," I said to Dave. "Perhaps it's just having a standard? What if it's not being bougie but having a standard?"

I tried it on in my mouth and then in my heart. Stillness. Peace. 

Yes, this. 

We are limited by so many mis-associations. Conclusions we've drawn from years and years of our collective experiences: from our childhood, from our schooling, from watching the lives of others around us, from mimicking those we aspire to be more like. 

Those interpretations look like truths, but when we hold them up to the light of our desire, when we stand in the magnificence of what is and all we are, we can see them for what they truly are--nothing. 

Smoke and mirrors. 

A distorted funhouse. 

Illusions blocking our path at every turn, disorienting us, keeping us from seeing the clearer path that’s always been there. 

Learning to listen to our desires, to receive them as the divine blueprint for assembling the most expansive life God has designed for us—is the key. This isn’t about keeping up with the Joneses or looking like money or looking like success. This is about honoring and being so aligned with yourself that outside becomes a reflection of the light inside. 

We all have this light. 

And some of us have taken great care to nurture this light, tending to who we are on the inside. 

But in our staunch valuing of substance over stuff, we’ve cut ourselves off from the fullness of what’s available to us. We’ve cut ourselves off from basking in the warmth of our own sun, of delighting in all of who we are and who we’ve worked hard to be. 

We are light. 

Light from the inside out is the purest light. 

Some of us are struggling because somewhere along the way, we And in my case, I was unconsciously draping my light with so it didn’t shine too bright

And if my belief is strong enough to construct a whole house without my effort, I can't imagine what it can do with my intention, awareness and focus behind it. 

I'm about to find out.
What about you?