{"id":197,"date":"2011-12-22T16:13:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-22T16:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/otitijasmine.wordpress.com\/2011\/12\/22\/personal-portrait"},"modified":"2011-12-22T16:13:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-22T16:13:00","slug":"personal-portrait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.otitijasmine.com\/otitijasmine.org\/2011\/12\/22\/personal-portrait\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal Portrait"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">I want to know that I lived. That I was brave enough to love hard and strong, unabashedly and unreservedly. I want to know that I went with my gut &amp; was free to dream, to hope, to reach for the stars.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">I want to know that I found my talent and drew it forth, that my well of potential did not go untapped. I want to live every minute, every second, safe only in the ability to wring every last drop of bliss available in each moment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">I want to know that I chased after greatness and waited for nothing to come to me. I want to know that I gave myself every opportunity, every chance to be me, to be myself. I want to live in the moment, here and now, unhampered by the past &amp; not crippled by expectations of the future.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">I want to know that every breath, every moment, was treasured and appreciated. I want to know that I can laugh at myself and forgive my mistakes; that I can work over a situation and be done with it for good and not continuously obsess over what went wrong or why it did.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">I want to know that I listened to my heart and went where it took me, unafraid of what people think or what they would say. I want to know that I am ALIVE, that I am living for me and not putting myself in situations that would later make me ask &#8216;What if?&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">What if I had taken that chance? What if I had dated that guy, bought that dress, gone to that party? I want to know that I live a life free of &#8216;what-ifs&#8217;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">It&#8217;s easy to spend so much time planning &amp; wishing that one actually does very little &#8220;doing&#8221;; every moment accounted for, every time frame carrying its own set of expectations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">It&#8217;s not so easy, though, to have a general plan and leave the specifics up to fate. It&#8217;s not so easy to discover them along the way as opposed to map them out right from the start. It&#8217;s even harder to stop oneself from wanting to know all the answers NOW, to be content with getting a few at a time and not pushing for everything at once.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">I want to know that I was patient with myself, that I accepted the importance of moving forward with feasible steps, that I didn&#8217;t try to achieve everything all at once and end up with nothing at all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">I want to know that I can be gentle with myself. I want to be free. I want to give myself permission to be. Me. True to my spirit and in tune with my soul.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear:both;text-align:center;\"><a style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.otitijasmine.com\/otitijasmine.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/ws_sunset_star_1024x768.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.otitijasmine.com\/otitijasmine.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/ws_sunset_star_1024x768.jpg?w=300\" alt=\"\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div id=\"geo-post-197\" class=\"geo geo-post\" style=\"display: none\"><span class=\"latitude\">51.045925<\/span><span class=\"longitude\">7.01922<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I want to know that I lived. That I was brave enough to love hard and strong, unabashedly and unreservedly. I want to know that I went with my gut &amp; was free to dream, to hope, to reach for &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.otitijasmine.com\/otitijasmine.org\/2011\/12\/22\/personal-portrait\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21],"tags":[70],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moxie-soul-fire","category-open-heart","tag-exploration-2"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.otitijasmine.com\/otitijasmine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.otitijasmine.com\/otitijasmine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.otitijasmine.com\/otitijasmine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.otitijasmine.com\/otitijasmine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.otitijasmine.com\/otitijasmine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.otitijasmine.com\/otitijasmine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.otitijasmine.com\/otitijasmine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.otitijasmine.com\/otitijasmine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.otitijasmine.com\/otitijasmine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}