To Be or Not To Be Afraid

About not being afraid. Well, yes, about that… Remember that scene from the movie V for Vendetta when Anonimus tells Evey : “Then you have no fear anymore, you are completely free”? She had to go through some horrifying shit to get there, but she got there. And he tells her “You faced your death” because she would rather die then give in. She suffered so much in reality that any imagined fear of suffering of what might come if she doesn’t give in, became just… well, irrelevant.
This makes me think of two things:

Who are you when you are in love?

“Is it only when you are in love with another person that you see them as they really are? And in the ordinary way when you are not in love with people, you see only a fragmented version of that being? Because when you are in love with someone you do indeed see them as a divine being and suppose that’s what they are truly. And your eyes have by you beloved been open, in which case your beloved is serving to you as a kind of guru, an initiator. […] or you could put it this way, which is another aspect of it; that by falling in love and by falling in love not just as a sort of sexual infatuation, cause it’s always more than that, isn’t it? […] But when you fall in love it’s much more serious involvement. You just cannot forget this person, you feel miserable when not in their presence, you’re always yearning: let’s see more of each other, let’s get together, we’re completely entangled. Then, you see, a kind of what I call, spiritual element has been introduced.[…] Falling in love is a thing that strikes like lightening and is therefor extremely analogous to the mystical vision.” – Alan Watts

 

Falling in love makes you get out of your comfort zone, explore new things, discover new worlds. When you are in love you are more open to adventure, to learn new thin
gs. You seem to be a whole different person. But are you, really?
Or is it just that when you are in love you see yourself through the eyes of the person who is in love with you, and you let yourself really be free in all your aspects because you are just as perfect and whole as they see you and as you have always felt deep inside that you are?

Free from the box

I’m reading a book these days called “Your name and other heresies” by a Romanian writer, Ilinca Bernea. At some point in the beginning she talks about what makes a woman ugly:

“What is ugliness? It is something that happens to you. You are told: you are a smart girl, since you are small you are conditioned, like a lab rat, to be a prizewinning pupil and to despise all the airs and frills of a woman. For once. It is the way others see you by dint of what you were programed to convey. It is the way you come to see yourself through the self education you got from the outside. It is a blend of shyness, inhibition and shame of your own image and physical identity.” […] “To resume: ugliness is taming”

And I was wondering how many women feel like that? How many of us have been told in childhood or early adolescence that we are not beautiful, but we are kind, or smart or whatever. Bottom line, we are not beautiful. There is no sense in pursuing

As whole as we can

Djuna Barnes said: “A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow” and C. G. Jung said: “I’d rather be whole then good.” He is also the one to talk about the shadow, a term Jung introduced in psychology to designate the unconscious aspect of the personality, “the thing a person has no wish to be”. To put it plain and simple, while we might hate things like being greedy, lazy, aggressive, seductive, manipulating, toad-eating etc, we are most likely to have those very things lurking around inside of us, but we keep them very well guarded and don’t allow them to manifest. Or so we think.
For a very long time I loathed manipulation and thought I did my best to avoid doing it. I hated lies and thought of myself to be one of the most honest people I know. I played the role of the savior for victims and thought I hated the aggressor. These are just a few of the things that come to my mind regarding how I saw myself and the image I had about myself. Then I went into therapy, and in the past 2 years and a half I have discovered what Jung would call the shadow. Further more, I have discovered I cannot be whole, I can not be really myself until I come to recognize and accept all these things as a part of myself. Yes I do lie sometimes and I do cut corners; yes, I do manipulate – less now that I am conscious of doing it – and yes I am just as bad as the aggressor when I jump to the rescue of a victim, because I place her in a position of inferiority, acting as if I know better for her, therefor annulling the person that is the victim.
You know the pink elephant in the room? Well, it’s there whether we like it or not. As long as we are going to ignore

Desert

It’s a beautiful desert
The place that I live in
With hills ever changing
And the color of love.
At night the sky is closer
The stars sing solely to me
And I forget about the sun
So hot, so cruel, so bright
Burning, blinding, drying
Out my soul.
The blissful drops of water
That flood my night-time dreaming
Are just a painful promise
That’s always out of reach.
One day I’ll dry out hoping
And I’ll be like the dust
A toy for playful winds
Scattered to complete the beauty
Of the desert that I live in.

The magical place of Elsewhere

At one point in my life there was this elsewhere that started sounding so promising. Elsewhere was a place where I could find my dream. It was the place where I could do whatever needed to be done to fulfill my dream. Elsewhere was a place where I would feel useful. Or a place where I could start over, a place where no one knows me giving me the chance to be who I really am. Or the place I could go to just be someone else. Elsewhere was always this magical place that is not here where I felt stuck. Here where I felt like I was hitting a wall no matter where I turned, here where there was nothing new to do, no one new to meet.
I tried running to this elsewhere. Whether it was a different town or a whole different country. It was all good because of the novelty of the place, but it kept me hooked on the outside, so what I needed to find about myself, or become, or change within me, I could not do it. I felt just as stuck. Maybe even more. The walls transformed into language barrier, culture barrier, not knowing the place, not knowing where to start anything that I would have wanted to do. It was all very beautiful, exciting and very alien.
But there was something else that all these “eslewheres” gave me. I didn’t find myself, I din’t find my dream and did not suddenly transform into a whole new person. But instead I learned

A word of one’s own

I’m in need of words. In a world of clear cut definitions, I am looking at letters put together and they are not enough to make sense. I’m looking at the page filled with those signs and they could just as well be flowers in a field, different, beautiful, carriers of meaning that people give to them. But different to each and every one. The message is not the same though the flower, the page, is the same.

Right now, the only thing that ever made sense to me, the greatest love of my life, the WORD is but a piece of wet clay in someone else’s hands. Out of my reach, out of my control. As if that first moment in Creation

Take off your mask

Take off your mask. It doens’t help, it actually only makes it worse. It makes it harder to be. Because that is just what you want, right? To be? Of course. To be happy, to be yourself, to be accepted, to be loved, to be in that state of blissfulness that only trust can give you. Trust in yourself, trust in others, trust in love, and trust in the ultimate kindness of human kind. And love… Oh, love! Such a cliche, isn’t it?

Connection

Sometimes new people enter our lives. We create connections. They enter our souls to open up new doors for us.

Undone

You speak to me
Uneven words,
Confuse me with
Your smile.
The unheard silence