My experience of being me is notably different than what it was just a few years ago. Anyone looking from the outside may observe that I have switched homes, suffered intense loss, or moved on from my job.
What they may not see is how I now care for my intellect and spirit without apology: That I don’t think it’s frivolous to spend time pursuing my interests. That I allow my mind to float along to music or books as I weave dreams in ways I never allowed myself before. That when faced with injury or pain, I’m tender yet strong for myself rather than impatient and accusatory.
They may also not see that I better understand and trust my process of creation: That I allow myself to play with and rejig ideas in my mind, often creating a physical and organizational mess in the process, knowing that these loose streams will coagulate soon. That I need to dive deep into the mind’s dense and active ocean floor before I can come up with that pearl of crisp insight. That I have to allow neurons to fire a certain way while building new ideas. That I can march to the drumbeat of productivity but the sparks buried inside my mind, heart and gut get charged by this process of madly-expansive discovery that eventually allows clarity and precision to emerge.
These are the things that give me goose bumps when I immerse myself in a life and way of being that’s uniquely mine. They have completely altered the experience of being me inside my body. And I see parts of this evolving me spilling into my physical spaces through tell-tale signs and objects.
No, these things remained hidden from outside view. By the time anyone could see the change on the outside, the inside had been evolving for a long time. When we allow ourselves to change in ways our sparks invite, the work is initially for us but the ripples eventually touch every entity we encounter.
“There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself.
You are the only you that has ever lived; your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all the existences…
…So as I live my life then, this is what I am trying to fulfill. It doesn’t matter whether I become a doctor, lawyer, housewife, that I’m secure because I hear the sound of the genuine in myself, and having learned to listen to that, I can become quiet enough, still enough to hear the sound of the genuine in you.” ― Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman
