Genius
How do I change the world? It is a hard question to answer, isn’t it? But I found an even harder one: how do I live with the world, and in it? How do I remain myself, when I feel the constant, strong, irresistible pull to be “one of them”?
I’ve been so angry, so frustrated and outraged in the last few days, because of all the changes that are happening in America right now. I would have ranted and raged uncontrollably, had I allowed myself to open my mouth and say anything at all. So I didn’t say anything, not out loud, but the furious argument was running in my mind, all the time, without pause.
I did not know what to do with it, about it … I still don’t know much, but I can see the reaction. I can ask myself: “why does this affect me so much, why is this so personal?” and I can trace it back to the place where I was a child, living in my family’s apartment, and not allowed to be myself.
Yesterday, lying in bed, I felt like I was back in my childhood home, back in Poland. I felt like all the years of MY life have been erased, canceled. I felt like I was one of them again, like them again. Who I was, my own life, my own creations, my own reality – even the possibility of having my own reality, was gone. I did not have my own life anymore, I was part of them, a member in the system, a family system.
And so here I am, no less angry, frustrated, terrified and disgusted … because I feel that I am not allowed to be myself again, because the system (whatever that may be, family, society, law) is intruding into my life and wants to adjust me to match everybody else, so that I am not myself anymore, not a unique, autonomous, independent woman – but simply one of them.
So what do I do? How do I live with society, in a society, but my own way?
Of course I know the answer, I know that it is not a system that is doing this to me, it is not society that forces me to let go of myself. I know that it is I who is not remaining present as who I am, it is I who has collapsed and merged, it is I who let go of being responsible for how I relate.
“Be happy”, Brooks says, “this is a great news! It’s a wonderful opportunity for you to graduate!”
sigh…
1. Thinking doesn’t solve problems, it causes them
2. Disagreement is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate uniqueness
3. We can be no less than perfectly happy, ALWAYS, and
4. nature is the best model to learn from
5. There is no need to know anything
6. and so there is no being in the entire Universe and beyond, who knows how my life should be lived
A man came to my house today. He works with my husband, I’ve met him a time or two before. We don’t know each other at all, not really, our conversations are always brief, never go beyond a polite chitchat. It hasn’t today, either. And yet during the few minutes I spent talking to him I could feel something definite, something subtle, something very different.
He is a man with quite a remarkable life. He lives in London, has a job that hardly deserves that name, being way too much fun. He travels around the world while doing this “job”, and makes quite an insane amount of money.
He is very sweet, quiet, polite. And there is something more about him, something that is different from how other people feel. It took me a while trying to narrow it down, to pinpoint it. It is not so much about who he is, it is about who I am, how I feel, when I am in his company.
While talking to him I feel, I felt today, full and complete. I feel that I don’t need anything from him, I don’t need anything from anyone, I don’t need anything at all, because I am present and complete in my life.
I realized, as I was pondering this feeling today, that this man is not only fully and completely responsible for his reality, fully and completely present in his life, but that this is how he relates to others. This is how he related to me – as a peer, as a partner, as present and complete as himself.
There is a sense about this man of “having arrived” in life. True, he is very wealthy, true, he is very well connected, true, he has an amazing carrier, incredible life, but none of that is a factor here, it doesn’t feel like any of it matters.
It is a deeper shift that must have happened at some point … or maybe he’s always been this way … a shift from surviving life, striving, needing, fighting, defending, protecting to being, creating, experiencing. Because of who he is, because of how he relates, because of how present he is, how completely responsible, he has opened to and created for himself the life he has.
I like this man a lot. Even in a brief polite, meaningless exchange with him I feel met, I feel supported. Not supported in the usual understanding of the world, which is having someone else take care of some aspect of my life.
I feel supported because of the way this man relates with me, as a complete, absolutely present and ultimately responsible being. As who I am.
I realized this few days ago. I realized that I am not a writer if I write. I realized that I am not a painter if I paint, nor am I a designer if I design. I am who I am, and I do things.
I’ve been working on my fairy story for last few months and it brought quite a havoc into my life. What does it mean that I want to write the story? What does it mean that ideas come to me, that I hear a sentence and see a story, a complete story, from end to finish? What does it mean? I love to read, I read nearly all the time, what does it mean? Should I be a writer now? Should I not design anymore, and focus on this instead?
Exciting as the idea seemed to be, I was still confused, unsettled. I didn’t know whom I should be next. I didn’t know how to reorganize my life to accommodate this new direction so I froze, I stopped in between, and did nothing.
I pondered this the other day, the fact that I don’t write, even though I want to. The fact that I design very little lately, even though I like doing it. And it occurred to me: I don’t need to “become” a writer. I don’t need to “be” a designer. I don’t need to be this or that, I don’t need to choose between being this or that, because I am who I am already.
I can write a great novel, I realized, and it will not change who I am. I can paint and design, draw and illustrate, and it doesn’t change who I am. I am who I am already and who I am is unlimited, boundless. There is space for writing, space for designing, space for drawing and painting, space for everything, inside of me being myself, because there is no limit to me. I do not need to organize my life around one thing, one idea. I don’t need to limit myself to one way of expressing who I am.
I don’t need to limit myself at all, because who I am is limitless. No matter what I do, I am who I am. No matter what I do, who I am doesn’t change.
I went back home and sat down to work on my story. The confusion was gone, the constriction disappeared. I was free to spin my fancies and threw them out, send them into the world. the story opened and grew, free to develop anyway it wished, because it wasn’t me anymore. I was not the story. I was only myself.
“Is anyone else having trouble sleeping with all these planetary changes?” asked my friend today.
“What if planets have trouble changing because we don’t sleep?” I asked, in response.
“Well, if the planets are trying to align with me, they’re in trouble.” she answered, and I said:
“The fate of planets is in your hands, and so the most important question in all of reality, right now, is: how are you doing?”
It was a fun little exchange and yet it stuck with me. How would it be, I wondered, if we were, in fact, influencing the movements of planets? How would it be if my moods, my emotions, my reactions determined reality?
The reality would shift completely, my life wouldn’t be just “mine”, isolated, private. It wouldn’t be just “my business”, it would be everybody’s business, the whole world’s business, reality’s business.
Can you imagine who you are affecting not only you, your family and friends, but the entire planet? You get sad, and it rains, you get angry and there is draught, you are happy and there is a beautiful, sunny, fresh weather. You are furious and the earth shakes. If that was the truth – how would you see yourself, relate to yourself? With what care and awareness would you experience every minute of every day, if you knew that the wellness of the whole planet depended on it?
Kings and queens knew that responsibility, I thought. They knew that their life isn’t only their own, but also, if not most of all, their people’s. They knew that by being who they are they created reality for entire nations. They accepted the responsibility, they held the space, and so they were given a great power.
Powerful people of present day … do they rule and organize the world because they have the money and influence that allows them to do it, or do they have the money and influence because they know that their life is not their own, because they know that who they are creates reality not only for them, but for the world? And so the universe provides them with power that they can handle, with influence that they can hold space for.
What if your life is not just your own? What if how you relate, how you are, determines the faith of planets and the movements of stars? What if this is the simple truth, for all of us. Not only for the special few, for the king or the queen, but for everyone?
