Acts of Enjoyment
The Unravelling – Part 1
About a 18 months ago, before the coronavirus pandemic hit the South African shores I was on a journey to discover what made me tick — in all forms. In a very short space of time, I had made drastic life altering choices and found myself in a space where my identity had fundamentally shifted. I basically had no clue who I was or what I was about anymore.
Through a leadership development course, I learned to understand that our life experiences, upbringings, and the stories we told about ourselves had a direct impact on how we showed up in the most important part of life, our relationships. It is rather ironic that the first assignment of this course was to give an overview of your life, right up until this point you were standing at the podium.
In every role that we play in our lives we are always in relation to another — in work, love, friendship, family, and play. It’s in those spaces we learn a series of programs that run our everyday life, consciously first. Then slowly the brain starts to find evidence of these ideas we that we have about ourselves — the good and the bad. Once we have some evidence that supports those ideas — we generate belief systems. However, the fun begins when someone acts in accordance or against the values that we are triggered into action. We then believe that our reactions are as a result about someone’s behaviour towards us, but the reality is — it’s just a mirror for an idea, concept, or trigger that we already hold within ourselves.
If there was one take away, I received from that course was “you are responsible for the results you get in your life”. A challenging concept at first, because the mind thinks “Hey!!!!! what if I happened to me, am I still responsible? I played no part in this — I am a victim”. Acting like a guided missle, the mind start to page through the many instances where we have been the effect of someone else’s cause — where we may have been genuinely not at fault for what we experienced… However, the reality is that we are ultimately as humans we are responsible for ourselves, experiences and healing — we are responsible for constantly clearing out our triggers so that we don’t have to respond to every stimulus unconsciously but rather we treat it all as information, and purely understand the facts instead of layering it with our expectations or perceptions. We must always be willing to peel away at rhe layers of emotional shutdown, revealing what is at our core – love and joy.
All this awareness did not come cheap, I had to pay the price of recognizing my mental state, belief systems and had to come to face that I was quite unhappy… masquerading as an ambitious person who’s story was to constantly beat the odds and find worth in triumph. Suddenly all the emotional turmoil of feeling that I had been dealt the wrong cards and had to navigate life demanded to be felt all at once. In my feeble attempt to reassert my control — I came out with a full proof plan of how I was going to take the emotions and come out of this with another edition of defying the odds. It all seemed so easy, until one Sunday evening, the president delivered the final blow that began with the famous words… “My fellow South Africans…”
As the lockdown set in, I doubled down on the distractions so that I wouldn’t have to confront the deep unhappiness I was experiencing. I tried all sorts of things from spring cleaning to reading — to decluttering my space. I just felt cramped, needing to let go of “stuff” that had found a home in my drawers and boxes — that remained unopened for what seemed to be millennia. I donated old clothes, reordered furniture, threw out papers and stuff that I had kept for no use. I kept myself busy with online courses, yoga and joined the workout and work from home revolution. However, nothing seemed to work — the deep unhappiness still came back, during moments of silence…demanding attention!
As the lockdown restrictions began to loosen — I started to lounge around in furniture warehouses to dream about what an ideal space was. I usually went along with a cup of coffee and sat in the store for at least half an hour, observing how different furniture was put together. I figured that if I would someday have a home, I’d never spare a penny on how it would be furnished. I bought a few items here and there that changed the appearance of my home — the greatest of which was to buy a lighter shade of curtains that brought in more light. Suddenly the light penetrated the gloom of having to stay at home, with a heightened fear of going outside. It wasn’t long before a few potted plans found their way into the space. After all, who wouldn’t want to share all that amazing sunlight?
This need to clear out started to spread like a wildfire into the all aspects of my life. I slowly found myself letting go of connections that had run their course, of ideas of myself that no longer felt authentic, and roles that felt burdensome. Some connections were easy to lose, their energetic drain was just too much to bear. For others it felt like experience a deep sense of loss, as if losing a lover one or a familiar friend — which you probably thought you would live out the rest of your days basking in the sunsets of old age. We often like to believe that people are going to be with us for lifetimes, we grow comfortable around them, and develop a degree of attachment to them.
At the expense of sounding morbid, one of the greatest and possibly most painful truths I’ve learned to accept about relationships is “all relationships end — in death or separation”. While this is not a pretty picture to paint — I think it invites us to experience deep gratitude for those that are still here with us and to ensure that we consistently appreciate their contributions to our life experience in weird and wonderful ways. When we let go of the what shape we believe each connection should take, we leave ourselves open to the paths of least resistance in the spaces that occupy. Maybe, through this, we invite those that are around us (and maybe ourselves too) to show in their most authentic form – vulnerable and ready to engage from a place of their own truth.
While the process of finding freedom from my own beliefs sounds liberating — it was also an emotional rollercoaster filled with a lot of grieving. The ideas and beliefs that I held about myself experienced an abrupt and violent end — burning in the raging born fire of my unexpressed emotions. I begin to see the ways in which I had limited yourself. The parts that had been hidden away to fit in, suddenly lay exposed like the bare African veld after a raging summer forest fire. I suddenly found myself at a crossroad, unable to go back to the old but also not knowing what path would lead to what I’d would like to refer to as “the best version of me”.
I had come upon a blank canvas. An opportunity to begin again.
