Horst Rainer Imberger
Nov 3 · 2 min read

Boy, did you go through a hell. But often this is the best way to get to the conflicts that underlie a change that you are unaware of and realise the need for change.

You write well I could feel the emotional need and desperation

Have you thought about how complex you are and the levels at which you respond and regard yourself. Because what you have discovered is at a very abstract level of self a plane where the need driving you demands non-conventional answers. And more particularly those needs need to be fed in some way.

Your initial identification of yourself via the usual conventional expectations defined a traditional conception of self. Partnership, marriage and family reinforced and family fed and reinforced those expectations

It happens to many people that as they develop, they create several narratives that characterise their lives but that usually only one of these narratives, dominates their self-awareness at a particular time. The other stories of self remain however and as they proceed in life, awareness of the alternatives become more prominent as needs begin to change both emotionally and intellectually. Traditional roles are found confining, there is a feeling that there must be more to life or to what one is and ordinary life and existence seems routine and boring. The lived and living reality lacks substance and irritates.

That’s not an unusual experience for an intelligent woman with a questioning mindset- seeking answers beyond the conventional ones becomes a driving need

But note, to feel unsatisfied requires an awareness of an awareness and the recognition of a new set of needs. These may conflict with one’s former outlook but many can either suppress the reflection necessary for such an awareness, or find some way to coordinate the two. In the latter cases the family remains the central pivot of the self

Women who return to work or change their traditional orientation and begin a new career of study, are examples

But then there is the case of the restless one, the one that is not satisfied with any one of the narratives that have occurred so far and wants something new and different-perhaps nothing thought of or experienced as yet.

Note how abstract that awareness of self is. It does not fit any categories, is not confined by any particular conceptions but is based on the risk of self-creation and adventure.

The creation of self and the discovery of a new way of life is what animates. It may lead to an exhilerating success or complete disaster. There are really few other alternatives

But such people are few and thankfully so, because their creativity, however great, skates around the borders of emotional and mental instability

The rest of us live in between these different levels of awareness, we seek an understanding of ourselves that is in some sense actualising but we are also aware that there is this something more. And sensibly we can sense the dangers of this creative individuality and avoid the freedom that it brings

    Horst Rainer Imberger

    Written by

    Former university teacher, social democrat with conservative tendencies and critical interests in just about everything