I am working toward being a whole, conscious person. My mind and body are part of who I am, but no single thought, feeling, or impulse defines me. I can observe what arises within me, consider it as information, and choose how to respond.
Sometimes I can do this quite well. Sometimes I get flooded, overstimulated, stressed, or distracted and make mistakes. I am learning to embrace that uncomfortable truth. Recognizing my own fallibility helps me extend compassion to others. We are all making judgments in a world full of pressures and friction.
I am also very far from being a Shaolin monk. I appreciate the teachings and perspectives, and I am grateful to those who share them. But my life includes taking a drive with a sugary Slurpee, buying the wine, cooking dinner, and sinking into a steamy, fragrant bath. I want to smell the early morning autumn air and feel myself walking through it. I enjoy having a body. I want to embody my life.
My life is full of distractions. Debt. Expenses. Medical discomforts. A very heavy past. A friction-filled present if I let too much of the outside world in. Some carry me away from myself. But others are the pleasures I choose. I give myself permission to enjoy an afternoon without turning it into another exercise in self-examination or existential crisis.
I’ve realized being conscious does not automatically make us self-aware. Self-awareness takes intention and cultivation, including a willingness to question the stories we tell ourselves. At first, it can feel as though so much is crumbling. It isn’t comforting. It can be quite scary. Things I once felt certain about become uncertain.
I find it interesting that when I came to this realization, my country and community seemed to double down on narratives and strategies to reinforce them.
I expected that listening, examining, and remaining open to correction would bring clarity. What emerged was a clearer awareness of uncertainty itself—how much less I know, and how much less I can know, than I once assumed.
People are told very young, “This is what you will believe. This is who you are.” Some communities, especially religious and political, work very hard to keep their people there and indoctrinate others. I am repulsed by this. Just my nature. Some of us rebel early against those socially imposed baskets.
Unfortunately, the naturally rebellious can accidentally overcompensate and automatically start sorting their reality into their own self-imposed baskets. This was a very painful lesson. Two people I thought of as independent wound up being just a shadow of what I was trying to steer away from. Instead of being mentors or contemporaries, they were just self-deceived rebels, far from enlightened, and very hostile to being contradicted by my rebellion against their rebelliousness. The irony. How droll.
But I had rejected many of the baskets early because the people imposing them did not feel safe to me. My body registered that discomfort before I could explain it. I had also learned not to trust my body early and was suspicious of how I sorted experiences as well.
People often find uncertainty difficult to trust. We are not always comforting souls.
I chose to remain independent, knowing that wouldn’t make me immune to self-deception.
I have my own stories to examine. And I have grown grateful that I could not settle comfortably into the identities and beliefs being handed to me.
I’m grateful for my discomfort finally. I’m grateful to feel the sand shifting under my feet and the wind changing directions. Maybe I never experienced life any differently and had to become a sandworm or a spider drifting with her web. Or maybe I’m that strange frog-fish thing that can live in mud and breathe air till the rains come back. Maybe my soul, if I have one, is a strange, compromised thing that other creatures should reject.
I can recognize the self-judgment in that thought. It is still there. I am a work in progress, learning to fully accept my compromised, adaptive self.
Recognizing the power of narrative changed how I understood many of our social problems. We can mistake a story that protects our identity, belonging, or interests for the truth. We can arrange what we notice around what we need to believe. Seeing that possibility in myself makes me more cautious about certainty, including my own.
I can accept that people saying one thing and doing another may feel truly righteous and still be deeply mistaken.
I still struggle with making things too certain or universal. I crave certainty in an uncertain world. I crave universality in a divisive world. I’m working to accept the world as it is, rather than as I would want it to be.
I learned early that someone could say they loved me, perhaps even really love me, and still harm me without recognizing what they were doing. I had to get that lesson.
I once understood the difficulties in my life and my struggle to fit in as misfortune. Over time, I have come to value the knowledge and perspective I gained more than the inclusion and advantages that belonging to a group might have offered.
It hasn’t made life easier. I have grown more comfortable with the discomfort, and with my own fallibility.
There is still dinner to cook, music for the drive, and autumn air coming through the window. I want to be present for those things, too. And I will enjoy the little company and companionship I have, even if I can’t verbally express a common understanding. I have accepted being unknown and misunderstood by most.
You know me. As you wish.
