waiting to be led
In the fall I asked on Facebook “who am I?” I wanted my friends to share their perspective of me because I had a feeling my own wasn’t quite right.
Despite my successes, the fact that I had gotten so many things that I wanted, I still didn’t feel happy. The only way I could make sense of this was that perhaps what I thought I wanted wasn’t what I actually wanted. In fact, it was possible that who I thought I was wasn’t actually me.
I was operating off outdated software. My image of myself was composed of my fears of who I was, the qualities that I thought were the most ‘marketable’ (likable, acceptable, desirable) & the summation of years of data that people had reflected back to me. If that was ever who I was, it certainly wasn’t at this point.
So if I wasn’t who I thought I was, how was I to figure out who I am? The answer was to stop looking for answers in the accumulated data set in my head that I used draw from & go deeper, to my gut. I started looking for answers in the feelings in my body.
Did I want to eat that? Nooo. A child inside of me would cross her arms, stamp her foot & glare at me. Did I like that? YES! The cells on my skin would come alive & emanate sensation. That is what good feels like. Okay! I was starting to get the hang of it.
If I wanted to feel who I was, I had to be willing to feel, well, everything. I had to feel sadness from my past I had been numbing out or reasoning away. I felt happiness that felt frighteningly optimistic & out of control. I cried more, a lot more, but I also felt more deeply touched by life’s small moments, the way smoke hangs in the cold air, a drop of water on a leaf.
Living from a felt sense was terrifying. If I wanted my feelings to speak to me, to trust me, I had to listen to them. I had to start saying no to activities or people that made me fold inward instead of lean in. These “no’s” challenged my attachment to my identity.
Was I the box of nouns & adjectives that I thought I was? No. I am the awareness looking inward, following messages from my body, an investigator hunting for clues. I am the hunt itself. I am the continuous unfolding in each moment. I am stillness, standing, waiting to be led.