Day 292: The Stable One

17082013

Chaos.

I was thinking back on what I wrote in my previous post (written a few days ago) and I thought about wanting to be “the stable one” - the one who remains steady even though everything and everyone else is in chaos – and how this ideal (a model I learned from my father) has led me to suppress my emotions and feelings. I asked myself today: why did I even want to be stable? And I replied: because my environment was chaotic. And then I realized something about our family dynamics.

In my core family when growing up there were six people plus one close relative who spent a lot of time with us. Three of my family members were very open about their emotions/feelings and their extrovertedness was sometimes even explosive. The remaining two in addition to myself throughout the years became very introverted, still and calm. I believe that to balance out the family dynamics I have become an introvert, a stabilizer of the other half of the family that was running rampant. This much was clear to me before.

But what surprised me was that for some reason in my childhood my family environment has felt chaotic to me. I know that I enjoyed all that hassle as well: most of my memories of my family life are positive and lively. But overall there has been a chaos of sorts around all of my childhood, be it in the large size of our family, all the people who came and went in our house, the general untidiness of our home, the complexity of social relations in such a wild bunch of people, the different stages of life everyone was in – or maybe it's the fact that I didn't have enough mental tools to comprehend all this. Some things we never spoke of simply because I don't think my parents knew how to, and I cannot blame them for not teaching us something they did not know themselves.

To handle the chaos I have learned to become an anchor to myself, which is cool because it has taught me independence and stability. The downside of this is the fact that my model of “stability” came from a source who was doing it at his own expense, which is what I learned as well. Now I need to unlearn this trait. I do not need to suppress myself to be stable – I do not need to suppress myself to handle chaos – I do not need to fear chaos; There is chaos remaining within me and the only way to remove it is to go through it. What is Life if not a chaotic bundle of every god damn thing?

Now that I think of it, I do recall being uncomfortable seeing that people around me were having chaos within them but not speaking about it. It stirred anxiety in me – perhaps I was learning to feel the anxiety the others were feeling themselves. I remember people in my family all hiding things, and it being obvious to me that they were, yet no one was speaking up to change that. Growing up among people full of bottled up chaos has taught me to fear chaos, because I did not understand it. All I saw as a child was people being dishonest, people in hiding, people afraid of themselves. I didn't understand that they were going through their personal challenges that had nothing to do with me.

So I've seen the emotional chaos that people have within themselves, and I've seen them suppress it, and I've seen how all of this makes them suffer. I've seen them strained, stretched, pulled; imploding, exploding. I'm guessing I did not want to add up to all of that. I didn't want to be one of them. And so I acted as if my inner chaos did not exist, and at times I believed my own act. So I created a separation of “me vs. the others” - me “having to” stabilize others by being sensible, calm and rational. Fascinating indeed.

Days 289-291: Approaching relationships through negativity

13-14 & 16082013

A friend told me about a notion he had made while dating a girl from a foreign country. He had noticed that it is in the Finnish mentality to look at being attracted to someone a negative thing: that when you notice you're attracted to someone, your reaction is “oh no” instead of “oh yes”. I realized that I had never really thought about this, and when I started looking back on my relationship history it seemed to explain a great deal of things. I don't know if this is exclusively a Finnish trait, but the overall negativity even in relationships certainly is a part of this cultural mindset.

For me having a romantic attraction towards another has always been a burden. Whenever something like that has come about it has felt like a great deal of trouble instead of being a reason for joy. When I look at my first crushes during my childhood and teen years there has always been this despair, a hopelessness, a knowledge that it would never amount to anything anyway because I'm not good enough for the other – and this disempowering way of thinking led me to never act upon my feelings.

There was also a horrifying fear of being “discovered”. I feared that if other kids or family members found out about my crush they would tease me about it. There is this specific “ooooooh” or “aaaaah” people would make when they found out, as if they discovered a juicy secret, as if they knew something super intimate about me and now understood what all of me was about – which they didn't, or that's what I wanted to believe. I didn't want anyone to know because then they would think they knew how I felt when they could not in fact know. I thought of my experience as something “special”, “unique” and “mine” - which in a sense was true – and did not see the value in sharing and cross-referencing things with others.

I still get this embarrassment of sorts, this feeling of being bare in front of others. It's kind of like I'm holding this steel mask of not being emotional at all, and when people hear of me doing something that is perceived to be emotionally charged, like being in a relationship or dating someone, it's like the mask falls off. I don't like it. I am used to being “the stable one” wherever I go and so expressing emotions/feelings is something that is somewhat limited for me. I rarely feel emotions, not always even on a daily basis, but how do I know how much exactly do I suppress? How do I know how much of my non-emotionality is pure blankness and how much of it is suppression?

I know I have picked up this ideal of being “the stable one” from my father, as well as the behavioral pattern of doing it at my own expense by suppressing what I feel. When I look at my parents, the ones who gave me the relationship model I started to follow, I do remember them being openly affectionate towards each other, if not a bit shy about it. There were older siblings who were in their teens when I was a child, and I remember seeing them all embarrassed about their relationships, angry and ashamed when my parents teased them about it – perhaps this is where I picked this up, because my older siblings were a huge role model for me, both consciously and subconsciously.

This is a topic that is (again) on the surface as I have recently met a person with whom I am in a process of building a long-distance relationship. Just writing these words here is difficult for me even though I know that not many people read my blog (voicing things to myself is the most difficult step I guess), and when I think of talking to people about it I notice this nervousness rising immediately. I realize that this is because I have adopted a negative attitude towards the whole concept of two people gravitating towards each other – a filter of shame, worst-case scenarios and negative expectations caused by a poor self-esteem. I'm not saying I should jump to the other extreme and go crazy with excitement, joy and over-confidence (which some people actually do, which is news to me!) but to allow myself the enjoyment of the situation.

So: on to self-forgive, so that I may find it comfortable sharing this experience with other people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to feel ashamed of being attracted to another person because I have feared that people would question the target of my feelings – in other words, think less of the person I am attracted to and thus think less of me as well.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear telling my friends/family who I was attracted to because then they would see more of me as well.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear sharing my attractions with others because on some level I understood that within the process of becoming attracted to someone I become in touch with the sides of me which have been hidden – sides of me that have been “secret” because I have not known how to be self-intimate – and that in my choice of who to be attracted to I expose the hidden side of myself.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear admitting that I was attracted to H because all the other girls were attracted to him as well and I saw myself to have no chance within that competition.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear admitting that I was attracted to H because attraction was a new feeling to me and I had no idea what it was and how to deal with it, and because I did not know how to express an uncertain experience and to seek for answers from others.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear admitting that I was attracted to T because he wasn't “good-looking” in the usual way, as I was afraid other kids would tease me for liking someone “ugly” and think less of me as well – that other kids would not understand why I liked this person and instead assume him to be “less” and me to be “less”.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear admitting that I was attracted to T because I believed he did not like me back and I did not want to take the risk of getting rejected, not that I would have known what to do with another person anyway even if he would like me back.
  • I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear expressing my attraction because I had no idea what would happen as a result; I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear doing things the outcome of which I could not foretell or, in other words, control.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear that I will be defined by who others believe my target of attraction to be and who they believe me to be in relation to that image of him.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that people will assume me to be something I am not.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as others have discovered I am attracted to someone, to distance the whole affair from myself and try and avoid the intimacy of sharing something so personal with others.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold myself back from sharing the early stages of a relationship with others because I have wanted to avoid exposing myself in such a sensitive state, rather sharing the news only when a relationship has stabilized and when I can pretend to be all cool about it.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive and believe that my experience of attraction was something “unique” because it felt so overwhelming, not realizing that everyone else experiences basically same thing as the same patterns of thought and behavior create the same experiences.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that even though my feelings were overwhelming in my subjective experience, other people too have had these overwhelming subjective experiences and that the subjectiveness of something is not an indicator of its uniqueness.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel embarrassed when people have found out I am attracted to someone, feeling as if they were looking at something private and wanting them to “not look at me” or to “look away”.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist exposing myself to others as I have not fully exposed myself to myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive relationships, attraction and sexuality through negativity, thus denying myself the enjoyment of embracing the situation.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel guilty for having enjoyment in my life through relationships.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel undeserving of enjoyment through relationships.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to being attracted to someone by conjuring up worst-case scenarios, summoning a fear that I will screw things up, that the other will not like me, that things would get complicated and troublesome, that my attraction won't stay hidden, that the other one will abuse me, that the relationship will advance too quickly, that I would have to be tied to a relationship – thus pulling back from the interaction with the other, interacting from behind a defensive personality and being careful not to expose myself until I feel “safe enough” to lower my defenses – which may in fact never happen with a person, or may take a lot of time.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I have been in relationships during my life, to not question my defensiveness and fearfulness and thus put a strain on every relationship (also some friendships) by not being “myself” (defenseless) until enough time has passed, if at all.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as a relationship has ended or been in conflict, to blame others for “not having patience” with me, not realizing that I am responsible for being in such a state that requires patience from others.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize I am harming myself by holding onto my fearfulness and that it is unacceptable that I keep on living as a “porcupine” that requires others to approach me in a certain way for me to feel safe.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear showing others that I experience emotions and feelings because it would require me to be honest with myself.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being honest with myself about my emotions and feelings because I have perceived and believed emotions and feelings to be a weakness.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to idolize the model of “stability” that I saw in my father and want to become like him, not seeing, realizing and understanding the damage he did to himself as he played out “stability” through self-suppression, and thus doing the same damage onto myself unquestioned.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that in order to be stable one should have no emotions/feelings.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that stability is to embrace my emotions/feelings as an indicator of who I am and to direct who I am according to how I see best – not to accept and allow my emotions/feelings to direct me; stability is when I am in the wheel and emotions/feelings are riding along.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that stability is to see myself as a whole, embrace myself as a whole and direct myself as a whole – emotions/feelings included.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear admitting to an attraction because I have believed and perceived that attraction makes me “weak” or “less”.

When and as I go into resistance to share the fact that I am involved with or attracted to someone, feeling that inwards pull in my chest as if my physical body was trying to collapse into itself to hide itself from the eyes of others – I stop, I breathe and I realize that this resistance is a sign that I have not fully embraced what is going on and that I am not standing within and as myself in self-honesty. I realize that it is not other people I am trying to keep away from me but myself. I breathe and I release the tension from my physical body and I fix my posture so that I am open, relaxed and balanced. I ask myself: what am I hiding? What am I ashamed of? What do I not want to be seen? And I bring the answer back to myself as I see, realize and understand that I am in fact hiding from myself and not from others. I release the point through self-forgiveness (written, spoken or experienced) and I push through my resistance to share myself with others by speaking through words that best describe my experience.

I commit myself to with myself go through what is going on in this relationship in spoken and written word so that through absolute self-honesty, self-certainty and self-integrity I may stand within and as my decision to be in a relationship and share my decisions with others.

I commit myself to observe and investigate how approaching relationships through the negative polarity manifests in me.

--

Another aspect of this point surfaced. In communication with the person I am in a relationship with I noticed in myself a fearfulness, carefulness, behind actions that were necessary – but not necessary to be done through fear. I realized I am scared of losing this relationship and that I am acting through that fear, trying to make sure that I am doing everything possible to maintain the relationship now that for the first time in my life I have some understanding of how to actually do that and NOT mess things up from the start. I regret all the mistakes I have made in my previous relationships and now try to make sure I make no more mistakes, that I would finally “succeed” - and this idea of “success” indicates that there is a relationship ideal I am reaching for, some kind of a goal that I believe to be possible to get to.

I will continue with this point in later writings.

Day 288: Fear of a group disowning me

08 & 10082013

Both a symbolic and a concrete depiction of what group work can be.

Before and during this trip I made several decisions on how to reorganize my life. My main occupation is changing from restaurant work into studying, and I am happy about that, even though I will be doing restaurant work as a part-time job to be able to support myself. I have been working through my disdain towards restaurant work and at the moment I do not feel resistance to it, although I do think that I will have to return to this topic when I actually start working again and face the points there that I haven't yet dealt with.

I am happy to be studying because I will be “allowed” to educate myself as an occupation, as a main responsibility. This will allow me to focus on self-development more than ever since childhood when my parents took care of my living. Many people have told me that studying is hard, and I am prepared for it, I know it's not going to be a peachy fantasy scenario of a Hermione sitting in a magical library with piles of books and magical answers – the reality of having to read through piles of books is really darn harsh, lol.

So, to make room for this completely new kind of an occupation - as I do not yet know what exactly it's going to be like, how much time it's going to take, how I change as a result – I have decided to no longer participate in theatre or movie projects. Cutting down on filmmaking is relatively easy because the group that I used to work in kind of collapsed and is no longer functioning, and not giving into the temptation to roll into castings is not a big deal since I didn't do that much anyway. But theatre is an entirely different challenge. I have literally lived in that theatre for the past 14 years of my life (and as I am only 24 years old, that is quite a lot). I enjoy the work that we do because it allows me freedom of expression and possibilities to try new creative things, new media, new venues, new ideas. I also very much like the people there because they are my friends as well as partners – they are the only solid group of friends that I have – and this is the reason I started to write about this topic today, because I realized I am tempted to waver from my decision simply because I miss these people and would be overjoyed to spend time with them. I feel like not participating I would be missing out on something, and I fear that the group will stop recognizing me as a part of them. I fear that I will lose them.

So why am I attracted to their company? What is it I receive when I am with them? Who am I with them? How do we spend our time together? And why do I see them “special” enough to feel that I am losing something essential by not having them as a constant part of my life? There will be other people, after all - I will not be alone – and I am not turning my back on these people completely and burning bridges, no. There is nothing personal in recognizing the reality of there being limited hours in a day and how that affects the formation of my social circles.

Rambling:

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the people who have been participating in my self-expression have something to do with my self-expression, that my self-expression is dependent on these people, not realizing that even though these people provide the circumstances in which I have opportunities to express myself in certain ways, I am the one moving myself to take these opportunities and thus the one to take credit for what I do and live as.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I can be grateful for the circumstances these people have provided through their own self-expression without making it a point of dependency.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that my surroundings are responsible for who I am within them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I am responsible for who I am within the surroundings I am, and that I am also responsible for being within those surroundings in the first place; I never just “happen to be there”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give credit for / direct blame towards my surroundings (people, facilities, activities) for who I am within my surroundings.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give credit for my self-expression for the people in my surroundings when in fact I have accepted and allowed myself to express myself a certain way by not being afraid of the response of my environment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel “safe” to express myself with the people in my theatre.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that even with the people in my theatre I am expressing the personality I am comfortable with in that environment – the “who I am” of theatre – and that I rarely go past the limits of my comfort zone even within theatre, and even then within the guidelines of that specific theatre culture.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that in theatre I am “free” in my self-expression, when this is in fact not true.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that if I am not in the presence of the people from theatre, I will be unable to be “free” in my self-expression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that what I have defined as “free self-expression” within this theatre context is a very specific kind of form of expression which I rarely utilize in any other social environment – and that the fact that this expression is rare does not mean that it is “more true” than any other form of expression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear utilizing this kind of self-expression in other contexts because I have feared that it will not be understood and that people will then judge me.

[I have been expanding the limits of this little by little. For example, there is a theatre exrcise I have used on the streets: I imitate the different ways people walk (without getting caught, lol) – not to mock them, not to build a caricature, but to understand why they move the exact way they do. This has been a really cool way to learn about physiology, character building and personalities.]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that others will judge me for singing, dancing, improvised movement, using my voice unconventionally and using touch in communication because these forms of expression are not common in most people's everyday lives.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the fact that these forms of expression are not present in people's everyday lives means that they are not wanted – not realizing that the reason these forms of expression are not present in everyday lives is because we as a civilization have habitualized ourselves to a very narrow scope of expression, and that to broaden that scope is to introduce these forgotten ways of self-expression through re-habitualization – by simply doing it and encouraging others to join in.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that utilizing these tools of self-expression (sing, dance, voice, movement, touch) would result in nobody understanding me and nobody joining in – not realizing that it would not matter even if nobody expressed acceptance if my actions indeed were self-expression, which in itself is self-acceptance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that self-expression is self-acceptance – to express myself is to face and embrace who I am in that point of time and space.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that others will focus on how “well” I express myself (how well I sing, dance, move etc.) and thus become inhibited from joining in – which is the opposite of what happens within (our) theatre, where joy of expression is primary and skill secondary.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the reason why people are likely to not join in with these forms of expression outside of theatre is the fact that they have not had the opportunity, the support nor the tools to develop such self-intimacy and self-confidence that one learns when doing performing arts – and that it is thus unreasonable to expect people to know how to “join in” when all they have done throughout their lives is suppressed sitting, walking and talking.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will become alienated from this group of people when and as I stop participating in our usual activity.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that if I do not participate in theatre work these people will see me as “not one of them” and that I will lose their acceptance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that no matter what I do and don't do with any person in this world, I am one with and equal to each and every living being and thus cannot become truly separate from anyone as alienation is an illusion created in the mind; In the physical reality we are of the same matter and of the same LIFE no matter what thoughts may run through our minds.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I fear “not belonging” I simultaneously desire “to belong”, and that as I within this desire already state that there is something I am not part of, I myself create a separation inbetween me and the others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that regardless of my fears and desires I am already a part of everything and that nothing can thus be taken away from me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust these people to appreciate me for who I am even if I no longer wish to support the things they do.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to please people so that they would like me – not realizing that it is not “me” who they are then appreciating but my representation of who I believe they want me to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see my theatre group as something I have to “earn” my way into through actions that are considered valuable, not realizing that while this is to an extent true (if I do nothing within a group then I am not really a part of it) these “rules of access” are man-made that can be abused to distance myself from the physical reality where we are all just people of equal value, not judges who judge each other, pass punishments and grant each other privileges.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that even though I will no longer spend time with these people as much as before, which will lead to us developing apart from each other (not necessarily to opposite directions) and having less to do with each other in our lives, I am not separate from them in fact and thus do not have to fear losing anyone.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear losing this group of friends because to me they represent functioning groupwork and a supportive social environment – things I haven't found anywhere else yet on this scale.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust myself to be able to introduce and construct functioning groupwork and supportive social environments myself into places where they do not yet exist based on what I have learned while working in theatre.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to stay within my theatre environment because there the above-mentioned concepts already exist and work and thus I don't have to implement anything new to make things work.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear leaving theatre behind and moving onto new social environments and new challenges because there I would have to take what I've learned and adjust it into practice in circumstances where it might be strange, difficult and effortful – not realizing that in terms of development (mine and others') this might be exactly what needs to be done precisely because it is uncomfortable.

Conclusion:

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the end of an era.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive life to consist of “eras”, as if life was split into chapters like a book, not realizing that in reality there is only this one constant NOW-moment and that perceiving time to be divided in “chapters” always chains me into the past and/or the future as a chapter consists of a beginning, a middle and an end – all of which do not exist in the NOW-moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that even though one form of interaction will not be present in my life for now, I am not limited from interacting with these people in different circumstances if I so will.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to limit myself from seeing all the possible ways of interacting with these people because I have wanted to hold onto the old familiar way of interacting with them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see these people as individuals but as a group entity, not realizing that this approach limits me from seeing the possibilities each individual or different formation of the group offers.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I have been emotionally attached to the group entity – my own conceptual creation that represents acceptance and companionship – and not the individuals themselves, and that what I fear losing in therefore also not actually real, which means that my “loss” is actually an illusion.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that in reality I am not losing anything at all.

I commit myself to give myself time and space to re-shape my life into such where the social relations I invest my time into are enjoyable, constructive, supportive and based on self-honesty.

I commit myself to investigate what the difference is between having a relationship based on honesty and one based on self-honesty – in other words, I commit myself to check my definitions of the words “honest” and “self-honest”.

I commit myself to utilize the tools (voice, movement, touch) I have acquired and adopted through performance arts in all areas of my life within and as the realization that while allowing myself to do so I also encourage others to broaden their “vocabulary” of self-expression.

I commit myself to utilize what I have learned from team work in theatre by experimenting with it in university environment and study work.

Day 287: Ramblings on justice and leadership

07082013

I watched the two final episodes of the third season of the TV series Game of Thrones, and I started to think about various themes that were presented. I noticed myself reacting very strongly to two scenarios (spoiler alert):

• I was shocked when a group of characters that represented honor, integrity, justice, and honesty were betrayed and murdered
• I was moved when a character releasing slaves by killing their masters was embraced by the slaves she had just freed

During the first reaction I asked: Why is it that the characters that represent all these good qualities, the constructive kind of leadership, everything I see to be worth fighting for, why is it that they always lose? Why is it that we don't see them winning? Why is it that they are the ones to suffer? What kind of a world is it where cruelty and dishonesty prevail? Am I naive to believe in humanity? Am I stupid to try and be a better person when the world we live in leads to outcomes like this? Am I digging my own grave by having faith in people?

But then again I have to look at the context of these fictitious yet realistic events. Even this group of people who represented everything that is honorable in warfare were fighting a war. They were in search of vengeance and power, even if not power over all but power to govern themselves. No matter how righteous, they too spilled blood. In that context it is no wonder their actions came back a thousandfold. So what I need to look at is my idea of “righteousness”, because if I see these characters to be “righteous” despite them being in war, there's something twisted in how I look at it.

With the second scenario I found myself thinking about leadership. I thought about this character and how I admired how she had managed to grow herself an army – and not just that, but a nation, a people – by freeing slaves and giving them a chance to follow her if they so wanted out of their own will. The people loved her for what she had done. But she, too, is in the search for power, although at this point of the storyline we do not know exactly why. She is seeking to rule all of the known kingdoms. She has had masses of people killed so that the majority of population could have their lives as their own. Is it right to kill a few to spare the many? Are actions like this justified? Is she a good leader, a righteous leader, a just leader? What does it even mean to lead? Is it just group manipulation? Isn't she really just abusing people who don't know any better?

I am thinking about all this because I am thinking about why I am doing what I'm doing. Why am I trying to be righteous? Why am I committing myself to becoming a better person? Why am I choosing the path I am now walking? What exactly am I trying to achieve? If I was a leader, where would I be leading people, how and why?

I do not want to be fighting blindly for an ideology. So far what I have seen of ideologies is that they are obsessed, fixated and unable to develop and progress – and that they justify their existence with themselves. I would rather be working for that which is unmistakably, commonsensically real. A heartbeat is real – it can be seen, felt and measured to exist by everyone equally – and thus every living creature with a beating heart (or the equivalent of it) is real, as are their needs. Suffering is real; try to deny pain when you're the one going through it. Sunlight, rain and the ground below us are real, as all of our nourished bodies testify. This is common sense: that which is commonly known by all, if not fully understood. This is what I will stand up to protect and preserve: that which is common, that which is ours, that which is shared.

But to kill, to torture, to yearn for revenge? To wish for death upon others so that your own kind would have more? These characters speak of justice with no idea what it means. To me there's no justice without mercy. The need for vengeance is born out of one's own anger and spite – not out of common sense. If a man has done wrong, death will not teach him to do right. As long as a man has a beating heart, that heart may choose to use the life it's got left to bring about a world with a little less suffering – it may choose to make amends through actual contribution to the world. Those heartbeats have immense value, because once life has been taken away it cannot be given back – and only those who live have influence on the world of the living.

So I continue to question.

Day 286: SF on reluctance

05082013

Imma just lay down here instead, OK?

See previous post for context.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent going back home because I have responsibilities waiting for me which I am uncertain of.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel uncertain about my responsibilities because I do not know what exact form they will take as they are new to me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will fail because I do not know what exactly is going to happen.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to hold onto what I already know because I find security in patterns that repeat in a familiar manner because within them I am less likely to “fail” - not realizing that in order to grow, develop and create something new I need to tackle that which is unknown and uncertain through trial and error.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define:

• failure = all mistakes

when in fact:

• failure = not learning form one's mistakes
• mistake = an opportunity for growth

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear embracing learning through trial and error because I have found it unacceptable to err.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try and succeed perfectly without failure – or to at least appear that I do.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that a mistake is born out of not having had enough practice, not out of me being “not good enough”, and that mistakes and accomplishments are thus not a measurement of my worth but an indicator of what I have practiced and what I have not practiced.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear making mistakes with a task I perceive to be “heavy” or “important” because I am responsible for the consequences if I experiment (trial) and then fail (error).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that the only place to learn is to engage with the world and practice, practice, practice, and that all the world is practicing with me because none of us are truly “ready” - and that thus there is basically nothing but practice, nothing but trial and error, and that failing in a task is thus not “deadly serious” because we're all just practicing how to live.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear authorities who (from my point of view) claim themselves to be “ready” as I fear they will judge my differing approach.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe these authorities to be “ready” in some god-like manner and that they in fact know better than me, here undermining and underestimating my own perspective completely by myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I do not stand within and as my point of view/approach, no one will.

[All of the above mainly concerns a specific task / position of responsibility I have written about before.]

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become passive when there is someone “dominant” around to be active for me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not pay attention to that moment when I define another as “dominant” and allow myself to fall out of breath.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to adopt a pattern where:

• masculine qualities = dominant
• feminine qualities = submissive

and that I have thus positioned myself to people according to how our masculine and feminine qualities balance out and become either a passive follower or an active leader.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that in reality there are no “leaders” or “followers”, only people of equal value and capability, and that whenever I assume a position of a “leader” or a “follower” I distance myself from the reality where we are all equals.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that whenever I assume the position of a “follower” I accept and allow myself to be less than I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that whenever I assume the position of a “leader” I accept and allow myself to see others as less than they are.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to approach other people from a defensive stance where I try to read “who they are” so that I could then determine “who I am” according to the others – not realizing that I am doing this out of fear and that I could just breathe, return my focus into myself and be who I am regardless of who the other one is or appears to be.

I commit myself to slow myself down by returning my focus back into my breathing whenever I remember to, because this process of slowing myself down and re-grounding myself will assist and support me to notice how it is that I assume different roles with different people and what triggers it in the moment.

I commit myself to investigate the dominant/submissive roles I take in interaction with other people and how this “power switch” actually happens in the flesh and the mind.

I commit myself to investigate how this “power switch” or assumption of roles takes place already before the interaction begins through expectations.

When and as I see myself having acquired a submissive or a dominant position with another person, I stop, I breathe and I realize that I am defining myself according to who the other one appears to be, and that the roles we take are not in fact real but what we assume we are supposed to be. I realize that by living out these power structures I support the existence of inequality. I look at how these power positions are visible in actions, in movement and in the flesh: What do I do to manifest submissiveness/dominance? Standing within and as breath I dissolve my submissive/dominant stance from within the actions, movement and flesh by breathing, grounding myself and, if necessary, doing the exact action/movement I was avoiding within my power position. (For example, if I've been submissive I will take initiative; if I've been dominant I give the other one space.)

I commit myself to write and investigate further in depth separately about the submissive and dominant roles I take, as I see and realize that what I have written here is general in nature and may not be specific enough to fully support and assist me.

Day 285: Travel summary - moving and not moving

04-05082013

For the past few days I have been going through very personal challenges which I cannot (yet) share much about publicly because they concern other people and matters that are yet unresolved. This private process has consisted of finding structure and getting to know myself through written and spoken introspection. I am currently going through past events from my childhood which are related to the events in my life right now. One specific theme has been present in all the points I've been processing, though, and because it's a bit more general I would like to open it up.

I am writing the following as much to bring clarity to myself to what has been going on in my life as much as I'm writing it to share it with others. Recently I have had trouble “getting a grip” of myself and this is helping me get back on track.

I have now been traveling for three months in countries and cultures previously mostly unknown to me. I left home after a massive workload of 8 months had just barely been finished and lifted off my shoulders, and I looked forward to this trip as a reward and also as a chance to rethink my life which, as had become obvious during that extremely stressful and demanding 8 months, was not the kind of life I wanted to live.

During the very first week of traveling I was ecstatic. I felt free and unburdened, I was full of energy, I was enthusiastic about the places I visited, the people I met and the things I learned. After the first two weeks I changed my location from one country to another, and I remember looking at my travel plan and thinking: “I have so much left of this journey. What will I do with all this time?” It felt like looking at a gaping void. I may have survived the first two weeks on nothing but the energetic release of the relief of finally being free of my duties, but I still had many more to come – many more weeks when there would be no one with me, no one to guide me, no one to hold me, no one to go to – no one but myself. This made me anxious.

Little by little my enthusiasm declined. I went through a phase of travel stress where I tried to move myself because of self-judgement: I felt like I “had to” travel around and achieve all these cool experiences just because I had the extraordinary chance to, but meanwhile I started to crave for stability in a “normal” life, a life with structure and balance and a level of certainty, where I wouldn't have to worry about my shoes getting wet, food running out or electricity being cut. I started to withdraw from sightseeing and focused more on enjoying slow-paced everyday stuff such as cooking and walking around, of which I learned a lot. (One doesn't have to go see impressive monuments to learn of a culture, when it is in fact enough to just turn the door-handle and walk down the streets.) Interestingly though, soon enough I was in a country where all I had a chance to do was this everyday stuff, and I didn't even try to go out of my way to do something extraordinary, which with plenty of effort might have been possible. I felt too worn out to even try.

But, within that period of forcibly sitting on my ass I did rekindle something in me that required me to get incredibly bored in the right company. I got excited about returning home because I started to see all the possibilities in the framework of the life I had “left behind”, and my view on how I could change my life for the better got clearer. I grew less and less afraid of returning home.

After returning to “civilization” - to a first-world country – I have been regaining energy to be active, but not in a hyper-mode as I first started off. I have learned that because my life at the moment lacks the stability one would have in a permanent environment I need to give myself stability through enough rest. I have learned a bit more about listening to my body as an indicator of the state of my wellbeing. What I have picked up, though, is that when I am alone all of this works fine, but when I am with others – whoever they may be – I easily give up all initiative and just follow around with little to no input unless I am in an obvious alpha-position. I have been paying attention to this phenomenon and working with it recently.

One thing I use to justify this limpness with others is the fact that I'm on a holiday: “I don't have to do anything.” And to an extent this is true. I have very few responsibilities to attend to at the moment, and most of them are small arrangements concerning my return to Finland. Apart from that there is nothing I “should” be doing. But I could be doing a lot. When I am alone I am more inclined to make the most out of my situation by investigating the places I am in and the possibilities they offer, because there is no one else here to make my life an enjoyable, interesting and “worthwhile” experience for me. When I am with others I give this up because, in all truth, I find it tiring. Whether this is laziness or a sign of stress, I am not sure.

This tiredness has made my return look more fearsome than it did before. I look at the responsibilities and challenges awaiting me and I think: “Ugh, do I have to?” Which is insane as I was just a few weeks ago very excited about the very same things! I see that there is an inevitable polarity pattern here, going from one extreme to the other, and I take this as a sign of a need to balance myself. How I relate myself to my tasks and responsibilities is somehow fucked up – I'm guessing I see the tasks as something “bigger” than me, something “out of my league”. But I will return to this in self-forgiveness.

This journey has been an adventure into myself. This perspective into activeness/passiveness, motivation, living, experience and work is just one of the many, and I will probably continue with the other aspects of what I have learned in the posts to come. I will next continue with the self-forgiveness on the points I mentioned here.

Day 284: The moment of change

01082013

Today I faced a moment I have faced many times before. It's a moment of regret that comes right after hesitation and self-suppression when you realize the window of opportunity that was there has passed: in words the thought that goes through me is basically “you blew it”. It's a moment of violent self-hate and panic where I have had a tendency of either blaming myself for being an incompetent idiot, breaking down in tears and grieving over the opportunity I missed or finding a “solution” through some actions that might bring about the moment of opportunity again – or all of them. All of these outcomes are born when and as I recognize the situation to be “helpless” - when I believe and perceive that I cannot do anything to correct my mistake.

Today I walked away from a moment of hesitation and in a heartbeat realized I had missed a chance to express myself to another. In a few seconds as I kept on walking away I went through all the usual responses: I felt a wave of self-hate and blamed the outcome of the situation onto myself; I felt an urge to cry because I thought something had just been “lost”; and as a solution I thought of sending this person a message with what I had wanted to express – but then I realized: “That's not good enough. You can still catch him.” I put my bag down and started running.

I ran to catch the person and as I ran there was a moment of blank hesitation. I saw the person ahead of me and I thought: “What will he think of me?” “What will I even say?” “Why am I doing this?” “Should I just turn back before he notices me?” - and with the last thought I knew that I could not turn back, I would not accept and allow myself to do that anymore, I would no longer allow myself to suppress myself and regret all the things I leave unsaid and done. And I reached out my hand, caught him and expressed what I wanted to express.

I want to share this moment of actual lived change – not just change in words but in actions – because I see myself to have come a long way. When I started this process of writing about eleven months ago I was struggling with immense self-suppression, which pretty much crippled me in all of my relationships and made them impossible. As a result of the process of writing (daily self-reflection, self-forgiveness, self-correction) and the support of the people walking the process with me I have grown immensely in approximately a year's time: I am able to change the course of my life – I am able to take action – I am able to say: “enough of this bullshit!” and start running. Within these moments I become the change I write about.