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“People don’t want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.” – Chuck Palahniuk
…. says it all.
for now.
If you believe humanity is good
If you believe we creatures are truly intelligent
If you believe in the science of equilibrium, dharma, karma
You’d care less about the rules and more about your conscience.
2010 rolled into the station, predictably on time but blowing a whistle and puffing a little more steam than I recalled anticipating. Amidst the fog, I stumbled into a content, wryly amused and empowered cabin; where ‘wrong decisions’ that ‘feel right’ become acceptable, and ‘right decisions’ that ‘feel wrong’, condemnable.
I committed mental treason,
a coup on Western society,
I have stolen back the element of choice.
We fool ourselves with sweeping claims that humanity is in tune with one another. Taking the life of another human being is wrong, equality is right; a Benetton advert of creeds and colours holding hands and embracing a helix of seemingly universal edicts isn’t human experience condensed. That isn’t what we know hour by hour, each day, each year.
We wonder whether to buy the Big Issue, whether to eat that doughnut, whether to kiss them again now we noticed the glint of a wedding ring. Do we stand up for the institution, indemnify ourselves as it wasn’t our finger bearing the band or pretend, even to ourselves, we hadn’t noticed?
In my 2010, the criteria for good and bad are measured against a level of genuine, intrinsic guilt that arises resulting from an action, not societal shame.
And there is a difference.
Such a difference.
The rules protect the system.
My conscience protects my humanity.
I know to whom I bow.
I’m in Ghana just now (reflections to come shortly) but as I am nearing the end of my stay here, I have found myself thinking about heading ‘home’.
“Home” – being a troublesome term when I currently, literally, do not have an address, nor truly know when I will acquire one. Obligations and meetings have me in London, Cambridge, Dorset and Glasgow in the days following my return from Accra, and so i feel somewhat sooner inclined to the notion of ‘heading onward’ than ‘heading home’. It certainly makes for less dissonance whilst my mind is assimilating the concepts surrounding my various decisions to, also, mentally ‘move on’.
I can’t help but imagine that if I deftly clicked the heels of these red-glitter pumps and chanted the infamous;
“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…”
Kismet would just shrug her many shoulders and look at me as if to say;
“Well…You’re on your own here Luv.”
…and i think i’m cool with that.
“My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.” – William James
I have been considering the concept that part and parcel of my efforts to become a free agent and evaluate decisions on appropriately selfish metrics, is the ability to wilfully make wrong choices and bad compromises as long as I learn from the experience.
In my latest example, I allowed myself to be emotionally manipulated into acting under the impetus to “avoid guilt” (in a negative move away from pain rather than a positive move towards pleasure.)
I was asked to do a favor, which I refused. A sensible decision based on my workload, state of mental & physical wellbeing and my assessment of mine, and others, potential gain/loss from my participation. I was, however, co-erced into retracting my refusal despite my numerous protests in an act it would be only marginally exaggerating to call emotional blackmail. I don’t feel great about myself or the other party as a result of this. (To put it mildly.)
What I have learned, however, has shattered my ego somewhat; as I see with disarming clarity the number of times people have shelved their sense of self, their personal needs and desires, in order to support, appease or placate me. For this I am, of course, immeasurably grateful. Conversely, I can also see the number of occasions people have, steadfast in the face of my blazing need & a choice selection of tricks from every 25yr old female’s arsenal, simply refused to pause their lives for me.
I have significantly more respect for the latter.
I wish I could have been more gracious, less petulant, in the face of their instinct for self preservation. But, blinded by the unwavering egotism that comes with distress, I saw only an abandonment of me (and therefore a lack of love, care and protection) rather than an instinct towards their own personal requirement and situation (and, perhaps, a knowing and trust that not only would I be ok by myself, but that the act of being denied the escape route and my subsequent ‘survival’ might actually teach me something.)
With hindsight I’d like to thank each of you who denied me, whilst apologising in advance to those upon whom I will inflict the temporary pain of passing on this lesson in person.
This morning I wrote a post over at my ‘work blog’ on the perceptions we have of our selves, skills and roles and the huge impact these have on the wider world; specifically via the manner in which we accordingly interact (or don’t interact) with opportunities in life. All this, of course, got me thinking about the manner in which I go about (re)defining myself.
Thoughts, it turns out, that were to continue as I then met up with a friend of a friend with whom i’d been trying to arrange a meeting for some time, a particularly inspiring yet disillusioned gentleman, we spent all afternoon discussing how divorced the Human condition has become from nature, and how a holistic approach rooted in self understanding and worth is required even to begin to improve this. At this point I couldn’t help but be reminded of a line in the poem “Our Greatest Fear” by Marianne Williamson
“Your playing small does not serve the world.”
I then saw this on Twitter and couldn’t help but love the headline..
Save the Planet? We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves; we haven’t learned how to care for one another… We’re going to save the F*ckin’ Planet?
..which, though humorous and flippant in style, only stood to further reinforce these ideas solidifying in my mind.
All of this today, harshly juxtaposed with a very quiet evening alone, is culminating in an increasingly strong realisation that my initial responsibility to the wider world is to become “okay”. Not amazing. Not great. Not, as some have already said, “formidable”, “inspiring” or any of these flattering and memorable praises. Seemingly counterintuitive, perhaps, in the face of my arguments towards building greater self worth in order to ‘serve the world’ but these statements, pleasing though they are, are meaningless as they were directed not to the ‘genuine me’ but to my ‘presented self’ while there is currently an altogether too vast distinction between those things. So to become ‘okay’ simply as me should be my first step. To not require a ‘presented self’, but simply to ‘present myself‘ because, to borrow another couplet from Marianne Williamson
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
I have recently created a physical space for myself that is new, challenging, frequently frightening and within which I have worked hard to begin the difficult process of eliminating my reliance on safety nets and comfort blankets.
Yet, as I continue (begin?) to figure out who I am, what I am doing, what I want to do and how I can be of use in this world, I continue to post here under an anonymous blog.
Next step.
Have the faith in myself, and those around me, to be able share this blog and thus to admit to:
Who I have been*
(frequently false, scared, confused, angry, lost, thoughtless or selfish)
Who I am*
(learning, growing, healing, listening, reclaiming responsibility and becoming independent)
Who I aspire to be*
(beneficial, oriented, honest, open and accepting, clear, calm, mindful and compassionate)
..and in admitting it, finally begin to reconcile the words I write in cyberspace with the words I speak, and the actions I take in my life on this planet.
* I have always, and will continue always, to love. Love completely. Love fearlessly. Love unwaveringly and Love without reason, expectation, analysis or question.
In fact, that’s the first thing I can add to my bio.
“I Love”
Be gentle first with yourself – if you wish to be gentle with others.
– Lama Yeshe
Feeling like the last 24 hours were an exercise in mercilessness: throwing myself in at the deep end of a series of pools of unknown magnitude. The good news is I realised that I could still swim. However, I could probably have found that same information out by simply climbing into the pool down the steps.
And though I think it was an interesting and worthwhile (if not, indeed, vital) exercise, from tomorrow I’ll be looking for middle ground. Which is tough as I have never yet felt comfortable within the grey scale.
So I have been mulling over the concept of neither wanting and pursuing everything my heart desires until I get it and more, nor restricting, shutting down, closing off and stepping away entirely but rather accepting with grace what is given and is available..
My conclusion?
I should tread more softly and allow myself more time, as anything I construct this quickly will fall just as fast. I have years to build a foundation strong enough to sustain all that I can be and I owe this time to myself. I am my own worst enemy. Constantly pushing. Never good enough. Expectations which, in the rare case they are not altogether unachievable, are certainly unsustainable.
And what hypocrisy as I urge and advise you of your beauty and accept you as a whole. Those things you regard as flaws sitting as neatly in my idea of you as those things you pride yourself upon. No value attribution. Just you.
…and now, to find ‘just me’.
It can be difficult to accept others and to accept ourselves.
“I should be better. I should be something different. I should have more.”
All of this is conception; it’s all mental fabrication. It’s just the mind churning up “shoulds,” “ought tos,” and “supposed tos.” All this is conceptual rubbish, and yet we believe it. Part of the solution is to recognize that these thoughts are conceptual rubbish and not reality; this gives us the mental space not to believe them.
When we stop believing them, it becomes much easier to accept what we are at any given moment, knowing we will change in the next moment. We’ll be able to accept what others are in one moment, knowing that they will be different in the next moment..
– Thubten Chodron
Today the entire height, breadth and depth of my insular world is weighing on my chest.
I’d describe it as somewhat of a difficult day but this has me thinking about what ‘difficult’ would actually even mean in this context. Clearly the day itself isn’t difficult. Getting through today is simply a matter of staying still and not expiring for 24 hours while the world goes about its merry way around me. I could do this and accordingly the weight would lift. But the gravitas exists because, try as I may, I cannot let the world alone. I have to act upon the will to change my life and my world, and as we all know acting upon a decision is what makes it real. Doing something about it is what causes it to have been a decision and not simply a wistful thought and as far as I am aware… no great gain ever came from wistful thoughts.
And so..
Today the entire height, breadth and depth of my insular world is weighing on my chest.
I read a wonderful blog post this week which tapped into a collection of thoughts and feelings I have been semi-consciously turning over in my mind for some time now. In many ways I am glad I found this post before I tried to verbalise the feeling myself, as I shouldn’t have managed it with close to the honesty and grace that Sasha Dichter has.
Simple, beautiful, a spot on ‘must read’ … please do follow the link above..
It is very easy for me to lose a coherent sense of “presented self” at the best of times. I am known to adopt the intonation, gesticulation and vocabulary of people I have been spending time with which, though intrinsically changing nothing about who I am and what I believe, can create a fractured picture for the outside world.
Particularly at this point in my life where I am generally confused, tumultuously restless, dissatisfied with my choices and fundaments of myself as a human being with a role to play in this world, I have noticeably been feeling myself ‘playing at’ different roles and doing what Sasha describes thus: “we play, we practice, we experiment…and in so doing we discover the ground we would like to stake out for ourselves”
In actual fact I found this post after a day long seminar taken by a speaker whom I both respect and admire deeply as well as, possibly arrogantly, see something of a kinship with. Hence it is perhaps fairly easy to see how this came at the right time for me, and is therefore worthy of sharing in my opinion.
But for now we see through a glass, darkly ... 