Once Upon a Time i went to see a Naturopath. This man was calm and used a very soft voice with long pauses between his sentences. He sat, still and considered, in his chair. He moved slowly when he wrote or reached out to show me something.
I don't know what his prescription was or what i even went to him about but i do remember something he said
"If you do this, this and this, you will be calm like me."
That sat badly with me for reasons the younger me couldn't really articulate.
I think about it now in the light of so much i see on the internet being about being peaceful and forgiving and Marie Kondo-ing not only the interior of our drawers but our lives with a minimalist broom sweeping all the fuzzy and unfinished things out of the way.
I think about it as i tend to my soul and her shadow and her magnificence and i want to go back to that man in that room in Hamilton and say;
"But i don't want to be like you. I want to be like me. I want to be wonky and scattered sometimes, i want to be confused and worried sometimes, i want to be exuberant and loud other times. i want to be me."
i have been learning so much about the subtle pressure applied to us to be something other than what we are as a form of control from the remarkable Kelly Diels, www.facebook.com/kellydiels, particularly in her facebook group "How to sell to women without selling them out."
Kelly talks about Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand (or FLEB for short) that encourages us to aspire to white, thin, cis-gender, heteronormative, ableist tropes without our conscious participation. It is a patriarchal bind that women seem to dive into (me included ) without a second thought. I mean we all want success and to be seen as valuable, to be desired and seen as worthy right? Through Kelly i am learning about how very narrow the definition of that is. How very dangerous it is to aspire to be a thin white hetero ablebodied woman at all costs, about the carnage and the division that creates in the hearts of good humans. I am waking up to the truth that i am outside that gate and that to aspire to that is to pour my energy down the bloody drain. I am not every going to be all of those things anymore in one acceptable package, ever.
I am other than that. And i realise now that doesn't make me wrong. It makes me real.
I want everyone in the world who cares about their inner life to be able to be accepting of who they are in all their wonky glory. No comparison or measuring or judging themselves based on cultural paradigms that have little to do with them. Look, i am sure Buddha was a stand up guy but i don't live hundreds of years ago in Asia, i grew up in Kamo in a moderately dysfunctional family and am making my way the best i can. i am not willing to perpetuate a system that is designed to divide us as humans, make us comply and shrink in order to fit.
No siree.
I don't want to be like anyone else. I don't want anyone else to be anything other than what and who they are. When that is clean we get to connect more fully and more richly. When we own who we are we are free.
And that, Mr Naturopath, is fine by me.
I don't know what his prescription was or what i even went to him about but i do remember something he said
"If you do this, this and this, you will be calm like me."
That sat badly with me for reasons the younger me couldn't really articulate.
I think about it now in the light of so much i see on the internet being about being peaceful and forgiving and Marie Kondo-ing not only the interior of our drawers but our lives with a minimalist broom sweeping all the fuzzy and unfinished things out of the way.
I think about it as i tend to my soul and her shadow and her magnificence and i want to go back to that man in that room in Hamilton and say;
"But i don't want to be like you. I want to be like me. I want to be wonky and scattered sometimes, i want to be confused and worried sometimes, i want to be exuberant and loud other times. i want to be me."
i have been learning so much about the subtle pressure applied to us to be something other than what we are as a form of control from the remarkable Kelly Diels, www.facebook.com/kellydiels, particularly in her facebook group "How to sell to women without selling them out."
Kelly talks about Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand (or FLEB for short) that encourages us to aspire to white, thin, cis-gender, heteronormative, ableist tropes without our conscious participation. It is a patriarchal bind that women seem to dive into (me included ) without a second thought. I mean we all want success and to be seen as valuable, to be desired and seen as worthy right? Through Kelly i am learning about how very narrow the definition of that is. How very dangerous it is to aspire to be a thin white hetero ablebodied woman at all costs, about the carnage and the division that creates in the hearts of good humans. I am waking up to the truth that i am outside that gate and that to aspire to that is to pour my energy down the bloody drain. I am not every going to be all of those things anymore in one acceptable package, ever.
I am other than that. And i realise now that doesn't make me wrong. It makes me real.
I want everyone in the world who cares about their inner life to be able to be accepting of who they are in all their wonky glory. No comparison or measuring or judging themselves based on cultural paradigms that have little to do with them. Look, i am sure Buddha was a stand up guy but i don't live hundreds of years ago in Asia, i grew up in Kamo in a moderately dysfunctional family and am making my way the best i can. i am not willing to perpetuate a system that is designed to divide us as humans, make us comply and shrink in order to fit.
No siree.
I don't want to be like anyone else. I don't want anyone else to be anything other than what and who they are. When that is clean we get to connect more fully and more richly. When we own who we are we are free.
And that, Mr Naturopath, is fine by me.
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