Day 268: Stepping into a developing country

01072013

Yet another culture shock, this time the biggest so far. I am living luxuriously in a house and even here some of the basic commodities are missing. I am adjusting, though. What it seems to require is taking one step at a time, not looking ahead, focusing on the necessities, focusing on survival. And that's the most interesting thing: once put in a developing country with little to no infrastructure, all I can focus on is survival. Having a house like this and not living in the bush enables me to do something besides surviving, such as writing right now like this. I'm starting to have a clue of what it means in practical terms that giving everyone the basic infrastructure for survival would release them for “higher” kinds of human functions. When the heat is killing you, all you can do is look for a shade and sleep it off. When you're devoured by thirst, you track down water that's drinkable – if you're lucky, you'll find a tap. When you want to eat, you take what's offered – and if you get picky and want some vegetables with your noodles and rice, you take the 30 minute walk to the market stalls down the uneven mud paths. And this is how the day is spent. In the fulfillment of basic necessities. If a child is lucky enough, he/she will not be needed to take part in these activities and may have a chance to go to school. Otherwise, there's just no place for studying. There's no energy left for it.

I do not see why some people glorify these kinds of conditions, because the problems caused by them are unnecessary: a small wound may get so badly infected just because of the heat and lack of hygiene that it may require hospital care. This all may be fun if you're taking a holiday from your everyday life, staying in a bungalow at the resort areas and taking organized cruises to see the dolphins – people might even say it's “relaxing” to be in a place so primitive – but that's just because those people don't actually live here, they have a place to go back to, somewhere to return to once it gets too uncomfortable. The only thing so far I've found enviable is the night sky. Here it actually gets dark so you can actually see the stars, milky way and all, and that helps you remember where it is we actually are: on a rock floating in space. It would be awesome to find a way to reduce light pollution in the busy parts of the globe.

So I will be living the local's life here – no resorts, bungalows or cruises, just the everyday drill. There will be some work but mostly chilling and taking care of basic needs. I am looking forward to this learning experience because it is unlike anything I've ever experienced before, and also, I think, one of the most necessary things I have ever done. It's time to bring in some perspective.

Day 235: Get away from me!

16052013

An interesting experience has risen up and I need to now write it out. It is something that has occurred in me in some previous relationships, but my situation now isn't like those, so I can get a fresh perspective on this.

I am traveling in South-Korea, and I am currently staying at the apartment of a person who I connected with at Coucsurfing. I am quite far from the centre of Seoul at a suburban area. He is being very kind to me, and his willingness to “give” his time, effort, money and resources is starting to overwhelm me.

At least in two previous romantic relationships I have gotten this huge overwhelming anxiety and just wanted to escape, and usually I did one way or another. They have been relationships where I have seen that the other is more “into it” than I am – meaning that the other has been more committed to and more invested in the relationship and more eager to spend time with it intensively and even lose themselves in it – whereas I have not really been there, I have not really been interested in the other person, I have not wanted to meet them that often, something in just being with them has made me feel like I'm in the wrong place. I have seen that we are there for different reasons, or that we are “out of sync” - and I have compromised myself in their presence because I have been unable to communicate this, and thus I have rather escaped the person by for example breaking off the relationship.

Alright, yes, that's the problem. In this situation with this host of mine I firstly feel like I am “at his mercy” because I am far away from subway lines and because we came here by car – but here I do not realize that he has told me where all the bus stops are and how I can get to the centre by bus. So this is clearly a misconception. Secondly, I am worried that the fact that he paid for our groceries and is giving me so much of his possessions “means” that he is expecting something from me – the worst-case scenario being sex – when I do not see the fact that he lives alone and is very lonely and is most likely simply happy to have some company. And my company I am happy to share – I've just got to make sure I communicate myself clearly and honestly and take care of my “personal space”, that I don't give my time any more than I actually can. The self-compromise is an issue here.

So, the issue seems to be with not wanting to address another's starting point for his actions because I fear conflict. And as I avoid discussing this I get stuck and compromise myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will get stuck in an unknown place, lost and alone, and that no one will help me or understand me – not realizing that I am in the middle of a densely populated area where there is bound to be someone who would/could help me if I asked for it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust myself to be able to survive in case my worst-case scenarios come true.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to build worst-case scenarios “just in case” in order to ensure my survival.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to only see another person through fear and believe the perception I create through fear, not realizing that looking at things through fear distorts things to appear according to my fears – which is not the equivalent of what is actually here.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive the hospitality and generosity of another to be an act of desperation and fear, not realizing that if there is desperation and fear in the other's starting point this may be addressed, and that this starting point still doesn't remove the fact that he is being of tremendous help to me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame myself and to feel guilty for not being grateful of another's hospitality when I actually have expressed my gratitude, both in words and deeds.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel anxious about another's willingness to spend time with me as I have perceived him to be acting out of desperation and fear, feeling uncomfortable in his presence as I have felt like my personal space or needs are “not considered” - not realizing that I am the one who has to consider myself and that thus I need to express my needs and claim the space that I require – and that this is not “rude” or “impolite” but an act of taking care of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that another will react negatively if I claim my personal space / act according to my needs because I am used to taking it personally if another reacts, and that I have thus avoided claiming my personal space and instead waited around for it to be “given” to me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the reactions of another are not my responsibility.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel anxious about another suggesting common activities for my remaining travel time, wanting to “decide for myself” and “make plans by myself” - not realizing that I am anxious and feel limited because I perceive the other to have “power over me” because of my unwillingness to be “impolite” and refuse his offer.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to automatically refuse the suggestion of another because I have created an image of the other as “desperate” and believed this suggestion as well to be “desperate” and “clingy” instead of looking at what the suggestion would actually entail and whether it might actually be something I'd like to do – yet also keeping in mind that if the starting point of the other is fear I am responsible to not participate in order to not support his mind-fucks.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive and believe myself to be “helpless” in front of people who get really excited about spending time with me as I have believed and perceived that I “have to” spend time with them because it makes them so happy – not realizing that I am doing the other a disservice by not questioning their self-consuming actions.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not be OK with my host's generosity because I come from a culture of a different kind of expressing hospitality than this one.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear fully opening myself in my host's presence because I have feared that this will be misunderstood as “romantic interest” as it often has been, as it is not common for people to be open with each other and face each other without fear and thus those who are fearless are often clung onto because they “shine” in the middle of everyone else – not realizing that misunderstandings can be solved by addressing them immediately when they occur.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear looking my host directly in the eye because I have feared that this fearlessness will be misinterpreted as “romantic interest”.

I commit myself to have my well-being as a priority as I see, realize and understand that I am responsible of myself only – not of other fully adult human beings.

I commit myself to trust myself to be able to find a way to survive as I see, realize and understand that I am surrounded by beings just like me on a planet that is of the one and same matter no matter where I go.

When and as I face a conflict with another person, I stop, I breathe and I remind myself that this being is one with and equal to me – that we are the one and same – and I place myself “in the shoes” of the other. I see myself in the other and ask myself what it is I need. I place the other within myself and ask myself what I am not accepting. I then find a solution based on this self-honest assessment.

I commit myself to push through my fear of being open with another by breathing and relaxing my body and physically opening myself up within and as the realization that if there are misunderstandings they can be solved.

I commit myself to not accept and allow signs of misunderstandings to slip by and to address them immediately when they occur in order to not accumulate misunderstandings even further.

I commit myself to reconsider my host's suggestions without fear and prejudice.

Days 175-176: Planning to avoid what I fear

15-16032013

I re-read what I had written yesterday and I realized that the reason I plan certain interactions beforehand is because I fear conflict, which I then justify with efficiency. I saw this as I had another look at the situations I had faced yesterday and realized I had been terrified of all of them (three in one day) and used planning as a survival mechanism where I design and decide how things will go so that I won't have to be scared anymore and am able to feel calm.

I see this is a form of social anxiety; just a well hidden one as I have come up with such justifications that generally sound credible. I've recently been faced with a customer at work who always uses a certain tone of voice and certain phrases when speaking to me no matter how I am within the situation – as if he is acting a scene without/despite the other actor – and at first I was irritated by this and did not participate in his “customer service script” on purpose because I wanted to provoke him to snap out of it, but now I see that his behavior is of course born out of fear – following the same pattern because something in the situation seems frightening/threatening – and I realize that I in fact do the exact same thing if not in the exact same situation. So I cannot blame another for “behaving stupidly” when I haven't carried responsibility for the point myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a format (survival strategy) into my mind according to a previous experience/situation and to then utilize this format to every situation that resembles it by associating and comparing the format to the new situation at hand and then creating expectations and making plans based on this – not realizing that as I accept and allow myself to create expectations based on previous experiences I have already decided how the current moment will go without ever even standing within the moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make plans based on previous experiences, not realizing that every situation is in fact new and not connected to the previous moment unless I decide to hold on to the past.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to plan the future based on the past, not realizing that as I do so I am never in the present as I am either reflecting on the past or projecting to the future as I plan and assess, plan and assess, plan and assess in an endless loop.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that neither the past nor the future are really HERE and that therefore they do not in fact exist.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make decisions based on something that does not exist anymore/yet.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to plan future situations in an attempt to avoid conflict.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear conflicts because I do not trust myself to be able to solve them and thus would rather plan the situations beforehand to ensure success / minimize the risk of failure.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust myself to be able to solve conflict situations. [This point keeps reoccurring and I have a hunch there's something related to this in my past I haven't looked at.]

--

I took one of the interactions from yesterday as an example to show just how much shit went unnoticed:

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I was going to the employment office, to fear I would be rejected and denied of the benefit I was applying for; to fear that I will end up without an income; to fear that I will be left with no support; to fear I would not survive; to fear failure and death – all of this as worst-case scenarios I believed, didn't deal with and left boiling under the surface - and to try and survive this by overriding the worst-case scenarios with “best-case scenarios” aka my plans where everything goes like I want to.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my plans are in fact the energetic polarity of my worst-case scenarios.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear I will be left without an income because I do not trust myself to survive without the safety net that is the social benefit system of this country.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear I will be denied the help my country's social welfare system provides even though I know I qualify for it, because the decision is in the hands of invisible officials whom I cannot meet face to face and explain my situation to as human to human.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust the facts that the invisible officials read from paper to be enough for them to “understand” my situation as I fear something will be “misunderstood” – not realizing that if the facts are presented well enough, they are the only factors these people should in fact consider, because everything else is based on emotions/feelings and isn't a valid qualification for anything.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear I will be denied social welfare because I am doing something considered “fun” (traveling) while unemployed.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear I will be judged for doing something “fun” while unemployed because from my perspective the system “demands” that I'll be actively looking for jobs while unemployed instead of “having fun”.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that the system expects me to do something “not fun” - dreary, dull, anxious, suffocating, hard, vexing, difficult, compromising – simply because I perceive looking for jobs to be this way, not realizing that looking for jobs only has all of these negative qualities once I assign them and that the system only asks for the action itself, not the associated emotions.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust the system because of previous experiences with the system.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a distrust towards the system based on previous experiences where I have perceived the system to have “failed me”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to approach the system of social welfare with caution and disbelief because of previous experiences and the resulting belief that it does not serve the benefit of those who need it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that this belief is a result of how I have viewed the previous experiences through self-interest, disappointment and fear and that therefore it does not consider what actually happened.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when I approach the system through caution and disbelief I also approach the people I face within the system with caution and disbelief and that all of this affects the interaction I have with these people because my starting point is not clear, I am not facing them as equals and I already have a buttload of expectations about them and the system they “serve”.

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When and as I notice myself planning for future situations, I stop, I breathe and I realize that the plan is the energetic polarity of the related worst-case scenario which I haven't looked at, and that I am creating the plan to balance off the negative energy. I then look at my situation and find the worst-case scenario(s) that I'm directed by and face it in self-honesty by asking myself “why do I fear this”. I then re-assess my plans to see if any of them is actually necessary, and if not, I let them go through the realization that the plans were created through a positive energy charge and thus cannot be trusted.

Thus, I commit myself to face any and all moments as they come without unnecessary planning by stabilizing myself in breath and returning myself to breath whenever I notice myself to have fallen out of breath.

Also, I commit myself to show myself I am in fact able to live through moments without planning by challenging myself to live as breath and to push through the resistance to do so - and to with this build trust in myself that I am in fact able to face whatever comes in each and every moment within and as breath according to what is actually here.

When and as I face a moment of resistance when trying to live as breath without planning – I stop, I breathe and I realize I am escaping a window of opportunity. I remind myself that real change occurs only outside of our comfort zones. I stabilize and slow myself down with breath, and one small movement at a time, one word at a time, one breath at a time I move myself through the resistance because I know it will lead to change, one way or another, and that I can in fact trust myself to carry myself no matter the consequences.

I commit myself to investigate more the topic of my distrust towards the society and the system of social welfare as I see and realize that there are a lot of things there I have not faced.

Days 172-173: Directing children within conflict

12-13032013

I am co-directing a group of kids (ages 7-12) whom we are teaching the basics of theatre. I've been involved with this group since September and it's been very educational in many ways: I've faced myself as a director, gone over my relationship to children in general and learned a lot about how children “work” in terms of behavior, cognition and self-expression.

Today we had another meeting and due to a couple of problematic children the situation got chaotic. I was faced with my helplessness as I had very little clue as to how to solve a situation like that, and as I was trying to figure out what to do I noticed myself thinking about how the other director – my mentor in theatre for the past 10 years – would perhaps handle the situation. A very interesting survival mechanism.

As I was thinking “how would she handle this” I pulled up some memories that I associated with the situation. I remembered a situation from just half an hour ago where she had reacted in a certain way to certain behavior and then I cross-referenced this with older memories. In that survival mode any course of action that seemed “valid” (validated by a memory of a situation where the action apparently “worked” / produced the desired outcome) was as good an option as any.

Interesting here is that within that survival mode caused by my fear of losing control over the situation I myself did not stop to consider what the best possible course of action would have been – I didn't event try to figure it out by myself, because I had an example to mimic. And so I would try an approach another had presented without stopping to consider why I would act this exact way and what the consequences would be, because I just wanted the chaos to STOP by any means possible.

The situation ended up with a child crying because of conflict and as the rest of the group went on with the rehearsals I tried to solve the situation with her. As I approached her I noticed that I was talking with a harsh tone because of her previous destructive behavior and I got scared that this might frighten her. As I got there next to her she indeed drew back and completely shut herself away from me, and I admitted to myself that I didn't know what to do, that I was helpless, that I simply didn't have enough knowledge and skill to be able to see what the best course of action would be – and so I stopped pushing myself with the thought that I “have to” know because “I'm the authority to these kids”. I allowed myself to stop and listen to myself and to just be there with the child – I did not know what to say to her to get her to open up, but I knew that just being there, being available to her would be important so that she wouldn't feel abandoned, as if I didn't care. And so I staid close to her until another person stepped in.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear losing control over a group of children because I fear that the ensuing chaos would be blamed onto me.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear directing a group of children because I perceive the children to then be completely on my responsibility, so that no matter what mistakes they make I would be the one who pays for it.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist taking responsibility over children because I perceive them to be “unpredictable” and thus a great risk to myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear losing control over the situation because I fear that the children would see me as “incompetent”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear losing control over the situation because I fear the other directors will judge me as too young, inexperienced and incompetent.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear losing control over the situation because I fear others would then judge me to be “less than” what I am supposed to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect myself to know how to direct and teach a group of children even though I have little experience of such.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect myself to excel at something I have little to no experience of.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect myself to live up to the standards I have set for myself, not realizing that these standards have not been thought out realistically as they do not consider the practical reality of things and thus cannot be lived up to unless someone (myself) pays an extra price for it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that by having high standards for myself I will avoid making mistakes, not realizing that this line of thought assumes that I reach my standards every time, which is not realistic because my standards do not consider the practical reality but only consist of ideal images and fantasies, and that by having high standards (or standards at all) I actually increase the risk of failure because the effort needed for not failing is more than I can realistically handle.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the judgement of children because they are not yet as corrupt as adults and are thus more likely to be honest with their feedback – not realizing that I fear feedback because I do not want to face myself, and that feedback is actually welcome and to be embraced if I actually want to grow, develop and expand.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear facing myself as a director because I have been afraid of my self-judgement, not realizing that my self-judgement does not consider the fact that I am not (yet) a professional and lack a lot of necessary information and skills and that my self-judgement is thus not valid at all because it is not based on that which is actually HERE.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to put myself down when I have perceived myself to have “failed” while directing a group with thoughts such as “I suck at this”, “they hate me”, “they must think I suck”, “I'm so stupid”, “they don't trust me at all”, “they have no confidence in me” - passing the blame all around and making the situation bigger than it is without ever looking at what actually happened without an emotional layer painted on top of the events.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame others for my self-blame and project my insecurities on others by interpreting their indirect communication (body language, behavior, tone of voice) to be a validation of what I most fear in that situation – for example, seeing another person look at me a certain way and interpreting the look to mean disdain/hatred/boredom/refusal/etc. when in fact nothing of the sorts was directly expressed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not embrace working with children – the most honest human beings around – as I have not realized what an awesome opportunity it is to face myself with so many mirrors around me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use my fear of facing myself as a justification to hold my defenses up while working with children.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify not showing my true self to children as flawed as I am by believing that I need to be a stern authority to children and that I need to do this by wearing an authoritative character.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that an authority cannot have flaws because that would reduce his/her credibility, not considering the option that being open and honest about one's flaws might actually produce better results as then one would not be seeing oneself as separate from and above the children but as one and equal to all of them as we are all human beings and we all make mistakes.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I need to be “above” children in order to achieve my goal of keeping things in order and avoiding chaos.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that the director of a group needs to be “above” the group so that the goals of the group work can be achieved because I perceive and believe the group to be unable to do this without an exemplary leader. [This needs elaboration – why do I perceive and believe human nature to lead a group into chaos if not externally directed?]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create myself an “authority character” through which I have faced situations where I need to be authoritative but which I am afraid to face as myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that all the numerous moments I have been hiding behind this authority character I have not truly lived but merely survived.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, within my fear of losing control over the situation, to try to survive the situation by looking for a fast solution from examples set by others instead of stopping and looking at what is actually here and considering what I myself could do right here right now.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to panic when a situation is “getting out of hands” as I immediately imagine worst-case scenarios and believe them, not realizing that as I act through panic I act through fear and that acting through fear has destructive consequences.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to exert my fear on the children as frustration, not realizing that as I exert my fear on another as frustration I blame the other for my fear and abdicate my responsibility as the creator of my experience.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to place another person in a position where I learn to do things based on the example of the other alone, ending up with helplessness when the person is not around in an unfamiliar situation to show me how things should be done.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as the other has not been around and I have reacted to her absence with fear, to search my mind for memories of her which I could follow instead of the actual person.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that whatever pictures of another there are in my mind – memories, imagined scenarios, characterizations – they are in fact not real as everything in my mind can be altered by the mind and nothing in it can be trusted to follow anything but my twisted perception, and that to base any actions on guesswork and calculations based on these pictures in my mind is thus the equivalent of driving a car with my eyes closed and hoping to not drive off a cliff.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to trust my perception of another person to be enough direction to solve a situation, not realizing that as I do not look at what is actually going on around me but only trust the survival mechanisms in my mind I am not making a proper evaluation of the situation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize I cannot reach a solution without stopping to consider that which is actually HERE.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I exert myself upon others and “solve” the situation by overriding others by force, this is not a solution but a violent compromise others have to comply to because I am accepted and allowed to have more power than others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when I override children with my “solutions” I actually abuse those who are at a disadvantage because of their physical development so that I could feel like I have succeeded in “solving” something.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not listen to how children propose to solve a conflict and justify this with the belief that “I know better” because of my older age – not realizing that age in itself has no value but that which those years have been spent on.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not listen to the participants of a situation and not hear their suggestion for a solution and instead believe my interpretation of the situation that I was not involved in but overlooked from a distance and override everyone with a “solution” based on this interpretation – not stopping to question my interpretation and to evaluate the situation from everyone's point of view.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make the surrounding chaos as movement and sound to feel bigger than it is by filtering this information (audial, visual and spatial) through fear – and I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to thus sabotage myself from slowing down within the chaos as I have looked for a remedy to my fear and not a solution to the situation.

I commit myself to slow myself down with breathing when and as I face conflict as this will assist me in facing who I am within the situation and seeing what is actually happening.

I commit myself to take into consideration all participants of a situation no matter their age as I see, realize and understand that we all participate equally and carry equal responsibility as we are all equal as living beings with one life.

When and as I try to survive a situation by looking at others for examples (either present or within my mind), I stop, I breathe and I realize I am looking for an easy way out as I am trying to find a pattern that has appeared to have worked before. I stabilize myself in breath and I face the fear that I am trying to escape. I realize that no matter what anyone has done before me in similar situations, the situation is never the exact same even though they may resemble each other – and that thus no ready pattern can ever be a solution that could be followed blindly without my active participation and questioning. I then approach the situation at hand from the starting point of breath.

I commit myself to face children by pushing through the resistance to be here defenseless – in practice this means engaging in full eye contact, turning my body towards the child and breathing throughout my interaction with the child while being aware of the movements of my mind.

I commit myself to embrace the company of children as an opportunity to learn of myself.

I commit myself to face and investigate how I use and abuse the position of authority with children.

I commit myself to face myself as a participant of conflict.