Last week I tried on a new pair of genuine Australian sheepskin boots in a warehouse store. The boots have a buckle over the instep and at the top of the boot. I hated the buckles, so I put the boots back in the box, put the box on the shelf and walked away.
As I was walking past the apples and oranges towards the strawberries, I kept thinking about the boots. They were only $29.99 for real sheepskin. Or was it $39.99? I can’t remember. But the buckles. I hated the buckles.
Then I realized.
I can cut the buckle off.
I walked back to the boot display and put a box of boots in my shopping cart. When I came home I cut the buckles off of the boots.
The buckle is:
a bottle of brown hair dye you don’t want to use
a hug you don’t want to accept
stiletto heels that hurt your feet
a served piece of cake you don’t want to eat
studying to be a teacher when you want to study art
a piece of lace
eyeshadow and concealer
only having two children when you want eight
[share-quote]We don’t have to live our lives with buckles on our boots. [/share-quote]
There is no one in the boot aisle of the store telling us we can’t cut the buckles off our boots. Yet we often live our life with buckles we don’t want.
Sometimes the voice of “should” lives in our heads. We hear the voices of our parents, teachers, or our friends telling us what we should do. We read in magazines, on-line, and in books about how we should behave. Movies, television shows, and social media tell us, and show us, where we are supposed to have buckles in our lives.
“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them”
― Denis Waitley
If you have a buckle on your boot, will you cut if off if you don’t want it there?
Who will you listen to? Will you listen to the woman in the advertisement telling you how young you will look if you cover up the gray in your hair, or will you listen to Solomon who said, “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained by living a godly life.”?
Take a close look —can you cut the buckle off?
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