Born Today?
A reading for your birthday. Taurus season.
O, let my books be then the eloquence And dumb presagers of my speaking breast; Who plead for love, and look for recompense, More than that tongue that more hath more express'd. O, learn to read what silent love hath writ: To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets
When someone sees past the version of yourself you offer and comments on what they find there, the discomfort tells you something about the gap between the two. What stings is that they were right about something you thought was invisible, and now you have to decide whether to adjust the performance or let more of the actual thing show through. You have been managing how much of yourself to let show for so long that the management itself has become who you think you are being. The compliment that landed wrong is the one that saw through to what you were not trying to broadcast. The year ahead will ask whether the version of yourself you have been maintaining is protection or prison, and whether you are ready to find out what happens when you stop working so hard to control what other people see.