The Pain of Potential: To become, or not to become?
As you receive this rather vulnerable piece, dear reader, I want you to know that I debated sharing this piece publicly, uncertain if it would have any impact at all.
Truth is, when we write stream of consciousness as the wave of information moves and is seeking to be captured in words, we write the Truth of our experience. We cannot filter it. It is raw. It is visceral. It is painful. It is real.
And in those moments of deep vulnerability, every nasty voice rises to the occasion to tell you why no one cares, no one understands, or whatever other lie it happens to be.
But those voices aren't real. They are quite literally the by-product of years of repetition of the same thoughts -- habits, programing, wiring. Not real.
What's real is the information that moves through our body.
What's real is how we choose to engage it.
What's real are the consequences of our choice in the quality of our life.
What's real is not dying with the melody of the song still in you ...
So, here goes. This is one part of the creation of harmony in my life.
If you're called to read this piece, it is not easy, yet it is essential to our evolution ...
Enjoy! And if it speaks to you, connect with me and let me know. I would appreciate knowing that ...
Few of us consider change beyond the event within which it rests. However, the simple act of Being human
is in and of itself, a process… and within that one lives the inevitability of change as a sub-set of our humanness.
~ Louise LeBrun from “Navigating Chaos: Change as a Process”
That visceral, primal, nostalgic, deep sense of loss.
As I tread along creating meaningfully in my life, I notice so-much-bulshit going around. Part of me is filled with a strange yearning for the good ol’ days, and the other part of me knows that there was never really such a thing. At least not in my lifetime, nor any of the times I romanticize as better than. Perhaps, though, there were some parts that were better then (whenever that is) and there are parts that are better now. Given the choice, I categorically choose now.
I choose now because now, unlike any other time in history, I have a choice. I am not trapped in the confines of the cultural conditioning of the culture I was born into (Albania), nor any of the other two I have lived in during my youth (Greece, Canada). I live from a paradigm / mindset / ideology that compels me to worship truth.
And truth can be rather finicky, because it demands you keep searching for the higher order truth that contextualizes the one you already know. In other words: truth is perpetually evolving. If you want to live in truth, you must choose to stay curious about truth. There is no end goal. There is no final discovery. There is no truth to trump all truths.
All we have is the truth of the moment, evolving.
In those moments of a recognition of a visceral truth, often pain shows up. Pain is the indicator that things aren’t what you thought they were – or what you hoped and wished they were, what you pretended they were. Things are, instead, not-that. They are ugly and don’t fit the neat and tidy narrative you have in your head. Perhaps your family isn’t actually as close knit as you’d hoped for, perhaps your friends don’t actually know your real you at all, perhaps your husband doesn’t actually care enough to be intimate with you, perhaps the institutions you put your faith in your whole life aren’t actually intended to care for you.
Perhaps … the people you were told should love you unconditionally in the way you need, simply don’t (perhaps, because they can’t).
Living our truth can be so fucking hard, because everything wired in our body epigenetically before we’re born all the way to age seven tells us to either dismiss the impulses of the body, deny the truth of our experience, and/or defend the lie of the myth of the in-tact family.
The latter, ladies, has proven itself to be deadly. Deadly to our well-being. Deadly to our evolution. Deadly to our capacity to dare. Deadly to our willingness to create a meaningful life. Deadly, intergenerationally, to everything that is inherently sacred: the truth.
What triggered this blog feels so trivial: yet another person “leaving” a family Messenger group. It’s not that this person was deeply contributory to the group, few people are, but this is yet another person choosing to not face the full truth but instead employ the strategy of passive-aggressiveness to publicly punish, shun and humiliate – all functions of shame.
This is the giant, unspoken fuck-you.
In that single choice, the person gets to slam the proverbial door and shut everyone out. There is no opportunity for conversation, exploration or discovery. There is certainly no opportunity for healing; there is only the giant fuck you felt reverberating throughout the entire family unit. Some people are privy to know what the trigger was, others (like me) are left baffled and confused and wondering: what happened?!
I really think this is the new way families fight in the post-covid world – with a simple click of a button that speaks volumes…
Gaslighting as a process has become a way of life; perhaps it always was (what do I know?!). But now, in the era of the Internet, it has become the strategy to ensure people are left dazzled and confused with no discussion of any sort and sure as daylight with no accountability.
LOL, what a strange concept – accountability for your actions. So many people are distracted by their own public screams at some fill-in-the-flavour-of-the-day corporate-or-government (as if they’re different) entity, but take no responsibility for their own actions nor any accountability for the pain they caused to their so-called loved ones. Best case scenario? Sweep it under the rug and let’s just move on … smile for family portraits, post it on Facebook, and all is well.
I don’t know if any of this makes sense because there’s a lot that’s moving through me that I am processing as I write. I just know this … it really hurts to bear witness to the pain that we are causing one another because we don’t want to face our own inner demons. The problem is, in the process we create more pain … more division …
Never attribute to malice that which you can attribute to fear.
- Louise LeBrun
I get it; it really is fucking hard to face one’s own truth in those moments where the visceral scream is so loud and the invasive voices to not notice are even louder. In those moments where shame, fear and righteous rage take over the device of the body, there is no other way. There is only justification of how “I am right” … and no opportunity for further exploration. People do strange thing when they are afraid...
Sometimes, I feel tired. Like, really tired. Tired of how life is unfolding. Tired of seeing and feeling and sensing so much. Tired of even knowing myself as majestic – a strange thing to say, yet in this moment, it is true. I feel it’s true because I know what our potential is. We are unfathomably magnificent! And every-single-thing in our life has been designed to keep us small, ignorant, and frightened. We’d rather be right than live a rich life in unity with each other’s godForce.
Yet when I pause … and breathe … and I look UP, I trust the Great Mystery and I know everything is unfolding exactly as it should. It’s hard to really grok this, at times, yet I know it to be true. It has proven itself to be true for my own life. I know it is true for the evolution of the collective as well.
It’s just that the timeline of how long this might take to manifest for the masses feels too long from the perceptual filters of Stela–the person, who believes that we will likely give up our humanness to be transhuman in this generation. Still, the principle applies … everything is unfolding exactly as it should. I just don’t know what the higher order truth is that contextualizes this chaos… I am willing to stay with it, however, until the next layer of truth reveals itself to me.
Perhaps it’s time to re-listen to this introduction to the “Navigating Chaos: Layers of Loss” conversation. Feels rather soothing …
Most importantly, perhaps it’s time to re-member my essence as the Emerging Species that I AM if I am to thrive through the consequences of this massive cultural transition we are all living through. No matter the pain, I refuse to give us the Sacred that I have discovered mySelf to be (mySelf as metaphor for all of us, if only we’d choose to awaken to it …).
I suppose the thing that hurts the most is the profound lack of joy that I am witnessing … It's as if adults have forgotten that they are capable of such sensations, no matter what’s going on.
PS - As I write all this, my son is jamming to Happy Moon by Danny Go! – his favourite (and mine!) children’s musician. We dance together like there’s no tomorrow! Such great fun!! Strongly recommend!