What is there to say about begin afraid of begin committed, of begin linked to someone? What is this fear of somehow begin forced into something because of some action your took, something you said? Why is sadness coming over me that says “You can’t do that”?
I had a bit of a epiphany today. I noticed the thrust of my life. It’s a bit difficult to describe, but I found an image expresses it best. To me, my life is a evolution. For the first part, 20-odd years, I had my back turned to life. I wasn’t interested in anything that was coming, anything that life had to offer. I just kept my eyes squarely on the the past, what I already knew, and keeping things exactly where they were.
The next step was more active, I purposefully shoved away anything that might change me. Anything that, in any way, offered something positive. I was “not worthy” and anything that contradicted that was actively refused and denied. I picture myself shoving, with both hand, away any complements, any positive lessons that might disturb my status quo. I absolutely had to stay exactly like I was or something really bad would happen. I had no idea what, but I was too afraid to take even a single step in any direction. Change was my enemy. I had to stay on my tiny island of safety. The slightest step outside of that zone invoked the most severe feelings of guilt and remorse. However, I couldn’t help noticing that my island of safety was shrinking, steadily.
In the next stage of my life was learning to accept changes from outside. I see myself as slowly turning around and not pushing away everything from outside. Even uncrossing my arms a bit and allowing some things to actually come to me. This was a long process. Years. I see my hands up and open, not pushing away, but then not allowing anything to come too close. Slowly, over time, I moved my hands back toward me, closer and closer. I allowed myself to experience some new things. To hear complements and positive input without outright rejection. It was possible to see criticism as neutral, or even positive and helpful. I could accept offered friendship, but I couldn’t return it. I somehow was able to turn down the dial on the internal monolog of self-criticism and the instant rejection of anything that might prompt me to think better of myself. To flirt with the idea that it was possible to be a good person. A happy person. A successful person. A well-loved person. And I was able to halt, and even beat back a bit, the inexorable shrinking of the limits of my comfort zone.
Today I see that it’s time to start reaching out. It’s time to go beyond merely accepting what’s offered, but to start making offers of my own. To lower my hands and allow what comes to wash over me. To reach out and pull new experiences toward me. To make offers, even though some will be ignored or rejected, without recrimination. To reach for, grasp and pull those new thing to me, even though some will resist and I will have to let them go. There is nothing wrong with that. It is not “wrong” to try and fail. And it’s really not my problem to worry about what others think of the offers I put out there, as long as they come from the right place, without agenda.
This has been hard to learn. There are so many agendas engraved on my soul that it takes some effort to discern what comes from me, and what is an impulse derived from “looking good,” or “what I ought” do to. I find that so much of my impulses come from an inauthentic place. Why is that? I suppose that it’s a result of decades of “fitting in.” I now call that “pretending” to fit in. What is the right thing to do, anyway? With so many people trying to be they thing is expected, who knows what is really expected anyway?
Part of what makes fitting in difficult is that the “rules” are entirely made up. They change, without warning, at any time and from place to place, and group to group. How can any “truth” be different for different people? To accept all means to judge none, and to offer only what is authentic for you. Determining what is authentic for me is difficult, but it’s getting easier. I’ve been learning to listen to my intuition and accept what it has to say. Even when it’s not what I want to hear. At times, it seems that the act of discernment is what’s important. I seem that I am sometimes led into a conversation that eventually leads back to where I started, but results in clarity on some issue, even though nothing has changed.
Time to be welcoming, not defensive. Time to seek inclusion and stop waiting for it to come to me.
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