My out-dated future self

About a year and a half ago my friend and editor told me that she’d like to see me write a piece on my life journey/direction and how finding and practicing the Shambhala teachings has influenced my trajectory.  At the time, that writing project seemed attractive, but daunting and I told myself (and her) that I really didn’t have time to do it right then.  From one point of view that’s true.  I could also say that I don’t have the time right now.  There are too many other things to do.  Finishing my dissertation.  Finding a career direction.  Establishing myself in a new city.   But when I look honestly, the truer reason that I don’t want to write that piece right now is that the course correction is still in progress.  I don’t now what I want to become, what career path I want to take, what role I want to take in shifting the cultural currents of today.  I do not know.

Sculpture by Jamie Salmon, accessed at https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/photorealistic-sculptures#!/photos/59884/4



Letting go of who I though I wanted to be.  I feel like in order to have a story or some kind of narrative, I need a beginning a middle and an end.  At least, that’s what I learned in elementary school.  Right now I feel like I’ve got a beginning, and part of a middle.  No end in sight.  I have a voice in my head, or maybe it’s even more in my body, that says, “You can’t do this.  You don’t even know what you’re doing.”

And at the same time, I’m not clueless about who I am and what I want to do.  But it’s difficult to articulate.  I know that the self I’m giving up just wanted to be recognized for being smart.  For seeing something that no one else has seen.  Discovering some pattern that has been here all along but has been overlooked or obscured by preconceptions.  Now I sense that being recognized for being clever is a pit-monster with an endless appetite.  I feel kind of queasy right now and I just want to curl up until this pain of not knowing is over.  I feel like that’s all I have right now, the ability to say, “That’s not it.  Nope, not that either.” 

Where do I fit?  What kind of clothes fit me?  What can I offer?  The generosity of being genuinely myself.  

There’s one insight though.  Finishing my dissertation is an act of letting go of who I thought I wanted to be 5 years ago.  That person, a scientist, had a clear (if difficult) career path, and lots of cultural reinforcement.  What is it about who I thought I wanted to be that I need to let go of to finish this?  Definitely any sense of the superlative.  Being who I am, studying this topic, completion and mediocrity are the bar of success.  


Action as perception.  I can’t just not act until I know and can articulate a way forward.  I learn the way forward by taking the steps.  ‘Laying down a path in walking’ as Francisco Varela wrote.  I enact the way forward.  In the Shambhala teachings, we talk about ‘living in the challenge’.  I feel like I haven’t wanted to experience the conflict between who I thought I wanted to become and who I am actually becoming.  I’ve been hoping that I could just pretend to be that scientist guy for a little longer until I finish my dissertation and THEN I could let that go after I’ll never need that way of being again.  Oh ho.  There is something here. 

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