Thursday, January 14, 2010

Historicity

Today I learned the history of the world. Not only that, I also learned the history of the human psyche, religion, and poetry. Interestingly enough, all of these things are so intertwined that it is difficult (and impractical) to try to separate them from each other. This is a huge insight for me, because I often feel disconnected from things in my life, as if my poetry is completely separate from my school work, and both are separate from my relationship with my boyfriend, and all or separate from my friends and family and... whew! No wonder I always used to choose numbness over engagement--when I believed I had so many separate lives it felt impossible to live all of them at once, so I just gave up.

My insight for the day is that I live one life. The Monica that is a student is the same Monica that loves her boyfriend is the same Monica that writes poetry is the same Monica that knits... There may be different facets of me, and different ways I choose to live my life based on where I am and what I'm doing and who I'm with at the time, but when it comes down to it, all the facets make up one complete whole.

The way I have lived my life as long as I can remember (probably stemming from my parent's divorce when I was still inelementary school) can be described like this:
I had different lives--let's say, for the sake of visualization, different circles. One circle for school, one circle for love, one circle for writing. I lived only one third of each circle, so each circle felt incomplete and not always worth living. I tried putting each of the thirds together into a new circle two years ago and fell into a very dangerous place. I didn't realize that I had to live each facet--each circle--of my life fully and create a bigger circle encompassing the wholeness of all parts of my life. By putting the thirds together I was only compacting the problem, not expanding my life.

Today, this is the biggest thing I struggle with. I am afraid to dive into my life fully because if I make a mistake I will feel it even more harshly. But the other side is that when I succeed I will feel it a thousand times more wonderfully.

I am going to a weekend training in Chicago this weekend that I know will push me into zones of discomfort, and also that I will have more tools when I leave to help me live a fuller life. As I will have limited access to computers starting tomorrow afternoon, I probably wont be posting again until Monday. But I know I can count on having a lot to say, many new insights, and more things learned about myself than I will be able to articulate when I get back. I am both extremely excited and very scared. Yay!!

Learning lots,
Monica

1 comment:

  1. I Love this especially. I found during production of the symposium that my life felt like all one piece--not separation between Lisa the mom, Lisa the lab member, Lisa the teacher, etc. And, it was much more relaxing that way, not thinking I had to change hats all the time.

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