Technically I lied about blogging like this not being in my comfort zone. I was thinking about this after I read back what I’d written in #1 and I was like… that’s not even true. It definitely used to be true but I can’t think of anything worse than chaining myself to a feeling / idea / identity / persona / version / whatever ya wanna call it that I’ve moved away from.
I was tossing up using the word “outgrown” here rather than “moved away from” but that feels linked to the idea that there is a hierarchy of identities (/ experiences) where I’m constantly improving / bettering myself, which I did used to believe. And there is nothing wrong with that, it takes guts to look at yourself in the mirror and accept that you aren’t happy with certain aspects or much of anything about yourself. That you no longer can identify with who you have been / who you are and you have no idea what to do next. I’m writing about it very conceptually like it isn’t soul-crushing and heartbreaking to realise that you are the only one holding yourself back. And you can stay there in that very painful realisation as long as you want, no doubt some people never allow themselves to get out of it, but once you come to terms with this, there’s the other side of the coin. Your perspective on life starts and ends with you, nothing and no one defines your perspective except you (unless you permit otherwise), so yes that can be paralysing or it can be powerful. You decide.
This experience happens to everyone eventually, it is collectively known as the “dark night of the soul”. I first learned about it through C Jung - “one cannot individuate as long as one is playing a role to oneself; the convictions one has about oneself are the most subtle form of persona and the most subtle obstacle against any true individuation…it is a most painful procedure to tear off those veils, but each step forward in psychological development means just that, the tearing off of a new veil. We are like onions with many skins, and we have to peel ourselves again and again in order to get at the real core”(Visions Seminar, 1930–1934). This experience is part of “moving away from” living on autopilot.
That was dense but it’s a cool topic, back to my point. So I can see myself in it, define myself as being an endless work in progress that I am working on refining over and over again, which I did for years and I found out so much about myself from that perspective. It’s that “self-help” mentality. Or I can see myself above it, knowing that any expression of myself (experience) I choose isn’t better or worse than another unless I decide to judge it as such, that I am not bound by an idea of myself that fit a week ago, let alone months ago. It’s funny because I always liked the idea of being “undefinable” but I never fully understood it until recently.
“Outgrowing” holds connotations of self-judgement and navigating from a limited range, needing to get from point A to point B, it feels contained to there is up or there is down, I’m either improving or I’m regressing. Again, there is nothing bad about that if it is inspiring, I choose to believe that I wouldn’t be able to entertain the philosophies I resonate with now without that time spent being the constant work in progress version of myself.
The perspective of “moving away from / moving towards” an idea of the self instead feels detached, like there is room to b r e a t h e. There’s a spaciousness and light-heartedness to this perspective that makes everything feel like an experiment, rather than a problem to be analysed and fixed. Maybe there’s something about this perspective being more focused on creating the present than focused on correcting the past.
Just because I’m serious about following my passions, it doesn’t mean I have to hold myself so rigidly that I’m choking the life out of myself (bars).
TTYL
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