And Now I’m 23Posted by admin on August 24th, 2009
This weekend, I turned 23. Milestone? Not necessarily, but it offered more than a moment’s reflection on my life and all the things I thought I knew.
One of my favorite books is Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chodron. No matter how many times I read through its wise snippets of compassionate teachings, though, I have trouble reminding myself that uncertainty is eternal.
Though it may be a byproduct of my environment, I feel there is part of me that is simply hard-wired to expect and long for consistency. My gut makes me freeze like a proverbial deer in headlights when a surprise presents itself. (Surprises I can plan for — like Christmas — are thrilling, however.) I have to condition myself (the stick) out of this muddy place, which is a beautiful, oxymoronic idea. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to move if I focus on moving.
I’m slowly questioning the little dichotomies that piece together my world, and there are a lot of them. A trusted friend recently put it like this: I need to stop focusing so much on WHO I am and become more comfortable with WHAT I am. There is a human essence within us all, a sort of package that comes with mere existence. Along with many others who are trapped in the confines of definition, I tend to first consider the best way to mold my self into the self I think it should be. The self that I’ve been told I have, or some supposed ideal that I don’t even want. Instead of constructing a WHO and charting a path via conscientious decisions to that end, we should all be relaxing into the WHAT that is there when we peel back layers.
It’s the peeling process that I’m undergoing right now. Rather than adding another year of gunk as I add a year to my chronology, I am stripping away the unnecessary details that I once thought were so vital to getting along in the world. Birthdays become less of a partying occasion and more of an opportunity for contemplation as we get older, and older. On this birthday, I contemplated the ways in which I can just let go and allow some of my soul’s varnish to strip itself. With no encouragement of a forward flow, the tide can take me in circles if it so chooses. I have to let it carry me, or risk achieving a dangerous level of narrowness. I’ve tested the limits of my WHO, the me that likes things to be in place, and now I want to readily accept all of my WHAT.
Who’s with me?
