It recently occurred to me that I’d been hiding aspects of myself, undoubtedly from others but more alarmingly from me. I'd been doing this for some time now – at first to cope, then as a way of life. I’d put the bits of myself that I wasn’t comfortable with into a box under my bed. And before long the box was out of sight and out of mind. But something prompted me to revisit the box a couple of weeks back and what I found baffled me. Its contents – opinions that I no longer agree with, distant memories, old feelings and the 1.0 version of myself – felt so foreign, as if they belonged to another person.
We are taught since young to shape our own identity to appear rock solid. That means without cracks or inconsistencies, as though we’ve been those people our whole lives. Almost like that Michelangelo quote, "every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." So here comes my conundrum: what do I do with the aspects of myself that I have outgrown?
In a society that seems determined to sand off all the nuances and complexities of emotional maturation, rewriting the past to align with our today rather than owning up and broadcasting it seems like the norm. It’s tempting to flatten ourselves into uncomplicated characters – sweet or malicious, fun or dull, feminine or masculine, intelligent or dumb – because everything is so much more palatable within the safe confines of a label.
But we are more than that. We are confounded and enlightened. Driven and conflicted. Confident and self-conscious. There’s a quote by Sri Nisargatta Maharaj that goes “Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, Love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves.” Now is when I would break into a philosophical rant about nonduality but I don’t know enough so I can’t.
However, I will say this: some days we are good, some days we are bad. Everyone has good days and bad days. We are all inconsistent. That is life. And it is important to taste the bitterness of life to truly appreciate its sweetness. Because sometimes we need to know darkness to understand that there is always a road to healing and hope and light. Turning a blind eye to the sad parts of ourselves is like turning a cold shoulder to someone because of their struggles – don't do it! An enchantress could turn you into a beast! (Did you learn nothing from Disney?!)
Maybe if we let each other be more inconsistent, we’d feel less contempt about our own inconsistencies. I’m extremely fortunate to have a family who loves me unconditionally, on my good days and on my bad days – despite my inconsistencies and I dare say because of my inconsistencies. (JK! Luv ya fam.) In doing so, they have encouraged me to love myself unconditionally too – the good and the bad. I now understand myself as someone who fumbles, someone who is not always strong, someone who doesn’t know what comes next. And I love that person anyway. Everyday I am learning to treat myself with kindness and respect even when I muck up, and to give that same kind of love to other people so that they don’t have to be good all the time.
In an attempt to normalize the messy but necessary pilgrimage we must all embark on to find the better versions of ourselves, I implore you to click through my archive of inferior and even cringe-worthy stories – great material for public fodder. At this point, I honestly don’t know which is more horrifying: knowing only my face but not my story or knowing only my story but not my face. You tell me. All I know is accepting and embracing the good and the bad of my past – my journey – is the first step towards being authentically me and living a life in accordance to that.
