My Own Dictator
Have you ever noticed that many of us don’t like to be told what to do? Or told what is or isn’t right? Where we should or shouldn’t go? How we can or can’t exist? Or maybe you feel the very opposite and you like to receive very specific instructions. You want and crave the guidance. Which also makes sense - we are guided from the day we are born with how to be. And hey, I too love to feel I am in line with what is, that I am serving some sort of helpful purpose.
Our society is set up in a way to have us conform to certain standards of being, often unknowingly. We are conditioned to communicate, perform, and create within a known parameter. Perhaps it is the way this conditioning is done that leaves so many of us unconscious to its very existence. It is subtle and takes years of training to reach a place where your decisions directly align with the constructed path of acceptable actions.
And before I get in too deep, I don’t think this conditioning is all bad. Through this process I have learned to be a part of a tribe, quite a large one in fact. I have learned and adapted tools of communication that serve to bond me with others, that serve to unite us. A lot of this conditioning has been put in place to allow us to expand in the ways that we have. It has been a founding part of our globalization. And yet, I feel we have met a crossroad of sorts.
In learning acceptable paths of action and ways of being I clouded out ways that I just am, by nature. I masked my deep range of emotion and held myself back from full response. Hidden in the blanketed layers of who I was asked to be, weighing heavily on the shoulders of who I am. Time and time again I had been told it was too much, too loud, too disruptive. Never enough but somehow always too this or that.
The judgments directed at who we are as people. The attachment to being a certain way, no matter the cost. The forced extraction of productivity over being in essence. Over experiencing our very nature. Experiencing ourselves.
Are we afraid of ourselves? So terrified of what lies within that we will do anything to push forward and be who they said to be, ignoring the little child within that begs me to ‘just be me’.
That child speaks to me. She says I am enough. She feels everything I feel and asks me why I don’t let her exist. Why I have locked her inside and buried the key. She is me, begging to break free.
She cries when I cry. Or more so when I want to cry but don’t let myself, for I was told that tears are weak. That they show my emotional attachment, and that emotions are in contradiction to rational thought. That we must remove feeling from being.
But all I have ever done is feel. I felt and I felt and I felt. And I told myself I was bad. For feeling so much, for experiencing so deeply. I was supposed to think, not feel. I was supposed to study, not experience.
And so I wonder, are those forms of conditioning serving us? Serving the very people that drive this force of scattered pure potential forward? What is it we are desperately seeking? And does it not lie within?
I ask because in recent years I feel I have found some puzzle pieces. I had been searching desperately externally. Trying, wanting to understand. To know. Deeply seeking. But the more I found the less answers I had.
It turns out there is an infinite amount of things to know, to learn, to discover and entangle into.
I did some external exploration and it’s interesting. I notice in myself that when someone else tells me to do something my motivation is depleted and regardless of the task it has become something I have to do. No longer a choice, an option, but instead a command.
Is the very way I am an option, a choice? Or am I marching to the orders of someone else who claims to know? And what are they claiming in the first place? How do they know? Did they go searching? And if they know, couldn’t I know too? If they know from within, if they guide themselves to guide others, could I not guide myself from my internal knowing too?
These are questions. Not statements. I don’t know.
All I do know is I am finding puzzle pieces. I am playing a game. A game in the world where I play a specific role. But also a game in my soul. Where I sink deeper and deeper inward, finding bits and pieces of who I am. Foreignly discovering the trenches of my embodied energies.
Sometimes these pieces even contradict who I know myself to be externally. And so there are adjustments and reintegrations. There is working with the being who I came to be in the times I came to live in, and the being that is me, untouched by any external forces.
There is a molding going on, a joining of forces. Inside of me. But I see this joining of forces happening externally too. I see those who have paused to look inside and see what they find. Those who have begun the acceptance of Self that we all deserve. And the unity that comes when we show up in full transparency and acceptance of ourselves, but also of others. We are One.
I don’t like being told what to do. But I like playing games. I like discovering. I like learning. I like assessing. I like contributing and collaborating. I like going down one path to discover that maybe it wasn’t the right path. And so I reroute.
I like allowing myself to be my own guide within the global community that has arisen. I like feeling out deep within my being what is mine and what is yours. I like noticing and sharing. I like interacting. I like trusting. I like guiding.
But I don’t like telling. I don’t like concrete answers that claim to be the only way and the right way. I think there are many right ways. I know I have seen many wrong ways, so wouldn’t it make sense that there are just as many rights as there are wrongs?
And what’s with the dualism here? Right wrong. Good bad. Black white. Female male. Cat dog. The list goes on. And hey, it’s nice to have words that describe things. But if we use those words as tools of opposition do they not simply push what was once One further and further into being separate, divided.
When will the word come along that explains the interconnectedness of the two sided spectrum we perceive. And who decided on two sides for what is an infinite circle of life?
Silly humans. We do what we think is best. And yet in our own search to perceive reality we attach ourselves to it being ‘fixed’ when really it is ‘flowing’. Constantly evolving, moving through space and time. Only here in the right now.
In the time you have read this world changing decisions were made. Things have shifted from when you started this blog to when you ended it. What decisions are you making that will shift the world too? Shift your experience? Shift how you relate? How you show up?
Are you ready to jump into the flow of life, or would you rather cling to the rock in the middle of the stream that claims it has seen everything there is to see though it itself does not move?
Life is happening all around that rock. Life is also happening in and on that very rock. There is no wrong choice, and yet I urge you to make the choice consciously. To choose for yourself.
To believe in your ability to decipher your next moves from what you know. And hey, maybe you are afraid of sinking, drowning. For you I will share that in my life fear is the only thing that has kept me anchored when I was meant to be soaring.
Know that if you so choose to join the shifting flow, I believe in your ability to swim. In my journey I have found lifeguards all around. But first I had to jump.
And staying on the rock isn’t all bad either. For you I ask that you recognize the rock, know the rock, feel it.
Wherever you may go, may your choices be ones that speak to both your heart and brain. May your choices be fueled by collaboration within your own internal systems so that we can bring about collaboration within our external systems.
It’s simply a reflection. For you are me and I am you. And what lies within is expressed on the outside.
But I don’t like to be told what to do. I like to discover for myself. Incorporating others perceptions but not in a way that fogs out my own.
I am my ruler, my queen, my king, my president. I dictate my life.
I hope you dictate yours.
And together, we rule.