I will take you back to when I was in secondary school

To biology lessons with a strict teacher (I was actually a little bit afraid of). One day, he told the class to make our notebook with assignments a little more ‘interesting’. At first, I wasn’t very motivated to do this assignment, but in the end, I got started.

My creativity started to flow, and I got the idea to colour the letters. The letters and sentences, all in different colours, I turned it into a work of art. I worked on it for a whole weekend. It was a lot of work, but I was proud of the result. And I actually had fun doing it. Despite the fact that I was often anxious that I was doing something wrong, I was now convinced that I got the assignment right and had created something very pretty.

Until we got back to class on Monday and handed in our notebooks. Our teacher had all our notebooks stacked in front of him and he wasn’t satisfied at all, with my notebook as an example. In front of the whole class, the teacher took my notebook, held it up to show it to everyone, and put a big red cross on the pages, saying: ‘’See, this is not how you do it!’’

At that moment, various systems started working inside me (looking back at it now). I was already rather anxious when the teacher took my notebook, let alone when he showed it to everyone. Shy as I was, I didn’t like being in the spotlight. When my notebook was ”up in the air” I just wanted to disappear from class. It got even worse when the pages of my notebook were crossed out in red. Not only had I apparently done the assignment wrong, which was devastating to me (I really wanted to do it right), I was also ashamed of myself, and suddenly I couldn’t believe that I ever thought that my creation was beautiful.

Without realising it myself I abandoned my creativity then (and many times after that) and I didn’t dare to depend on it anymore.

All of us may have experienced moments like that. Moments that make us smaller than we actually are. This often happens unnoticed, the other person is probably not even aware of it. You may not even be aware of it yourself. And still, something happens inside you. Without meaning to and without being aware of it, we no longer live from our deepest core and we hide our (true) selves. And that’s a shame, because there’s so much inside you that’s worth being seen and heard. ‘’Our greatest treasure is found underneath the dragon.’’

What’s underneath your story?