The big 40 has now finally set in, and I must admit that the whole "Life begins at 40" cliche has me waiting here patiently.
I must admit that I am not exactly sure about what exactly it is that I am waiting for to begin really, as I have had 40 years on the planet to date, so one can safely assume that I had to have been living all that time? I can however say that the months leading up to this have been months of deep reflection and admittedly many revelations. I have had to grapple with issues around established beliefs, norms and self reflection. The conversations that I have had to have with myself have been deep and very often brutal, as I have had to confront my own flaws and shortcomings. I have had to evaluate the relationships I have with all those I interact with both meaningfully as well as superficially, so much so that I feel like there is a mandatory spring cleaning that is required in my life. I have come to a level where I really don't have time for meaningless interactions or situations that don't feed me or grow me, as I just want to have my finances on lock, my children taken care of and my goals achieved.
I had occasion to attend a training event just before my birthday this year, and one of my mentors said something that really resonated with me at this point in my life, and it is something I have heard intermittently in my life, but it has never had the effect on me as it did when it was spoken at the training. The nugget for me was this: "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear". I cannot even begin to describe the movement that took place within me when that was said! I literally had the hairs on my arms standing up, and cold shivers took over me. I had been playing small, and I had been selling myself short all this time. I bought into the opinions of those who didn't have what I wanted or fed my soul, and I had allowed myself to be surrounded by negative and self-limiting thoughts and emotions, not to mention the people who just spewed out those traits. I diminished my light, so others could shine around me, as I did not want to "Shine on their shine". I had an epiphany of note, as all the watershed moments of my life flashed before me with such a vivid clarity that I almost felt blinded by how they played themselves out versus how I should have played them out. My gut was now screaming at me, as I had always chosen blatant logic, or what I thought was logic over that deep seated gut feel that usually directs you to where you should be. I had so many of these moments over the course of the training event that weekend, that I just had a deep sense that this milestone would be extremely noteworthy and also deeply transformational for me.
I had been given so much to process and the answers were looking to be a lot clearer, albeit vague. It's become an established norm that as men we tend to become set in our ways, and that any form of change be it emotional or physical is generally ignored. We even have those conversations with ourselves around the whole "I am who I am" and "What you see is what you get", and yet the entire human species has had to evolve in order to meet the challenges of the age we find ourselves in. The need for machismo is substantially less, and as males we are required to be emotionally intelligent and have a heightened level of intuition to deal with our spouses, kids and colleagues. The new landscape is totally unforgiving in terms of this expectation of all males, as we are expected to "show up" more in the lives of those near and dear to us as well as our contemporaries. The way we "show up" is also a critical factor for us fathers, brothers, husbands and uncles, as we have a direct effect on those we interact with, and the expectation is always for quality interactions. I learned that your smile is your billboard, and your character is your marketing campaign, and this knowledge yet again made me look deeply at how I show up. I usually come across as being stern and deadly serious, and getting this feedback from colleagues, my superiors and more especially from my family made me sit down and have yet another one of those hard conversations with myself. I had to understand why I was "showing up" in this way as well as where, given that I generally felt that I was an easy-going kinda guy!
The introspection into the way I was "showing up" led me down yet another deep and dark recess of my psyche which I had purposefully buried, and unearthing this was not only hard for me to do, but it pained me to have to do it. I had for the longest time felt that happiness was not a requirement for me, and that I was somehow not entitled to any form of happiness based on what I felt that "Life" had done to me. One of the really profound understandings that I had come to in this conversation with myself was that happiness was an inside job! I had consistently placed my happiness in the hands of others and for the most part, tried to experience my happiness vicariously through others, and yet I failed to understand for all these years why that was a problem! C'mon man! What the hell is wrong with you! I was harsh with myself, and I needed to be, as I was fully aware that the only way to experience true happiness was for me to allow myself to feel it, to purposefully create it, and also to revel in it.
The biggest departure for me was allowing myself to actually feel it and allow myself to let it have an effect on me, as I had become so cold and almost emotionless that feeling or properly experiencing any range of emotion was not something I prescribed to. I had to be everything to everyone in my life, and that had left me no time to experience any meaningful emotion. The last time I experienced anything fully was my last two years of high school and the subsequent two years thereafter. I had constructed such a wall around my emotions and I refused to let anyone in, rendering all my relationships automatic failures. I knew that I was a fundamentally flawed partner to anyone who would be crazy enough to be taken up with me, and there was just no way I was about to tear any of the walls down!
I gave up my teen years to help my family out after a traumatic experience we endured, I had to become more serious, more focused, more driven in order to be what I needed to be to my family. I lived in quite a shadow as a result of that, given that I always sought validation from my parents for everything that happened in my life and it was like I abdicated all emotion as a result thereof. I was constantly told in the aftermath of broken relationships that I was involved in that I was unlovable, simply because I refused to let anyone love me. I vehemently opposed that view, as I felt I had always done everything in my relationships to make the other person feel special, and I did everything in my power to make them happy, or at least I thought I was! All my relationships followed the exact same patterns! I would meet someone new, do all sorts of things to make them happy, only to be an outsider looking in on the relationship, as I could not fully commit emotionally to the relationship. I was living a misguided life thinking that I could make people happy, when in actual fact, every human being is responsible for the own happiness, added to that the fact that I simply shut myself off from feeling anything. I was permanently unhappy, living my life as a clown who was responsible to make others happy, but on the inside I was dreadfully unhappy.
I had made several experiences over the years, which could only be described as distinctly pivotal moments in my evolution as a person desperately seeking answers to the ever evasive explanation to the emptiness I had been dealing with for all these years. I had kids and I was
not showing up in a way that would be a good example of how to show and deal with any form of emotion, and being cold and clinical was not serving them in any meaningful way. I may as well just be a bank or a financial benefactor to them,as I was not poring out any form of emotion on them. I sought psychological help, as I started becoming really distant and I didn't want the gulf between my kids and I to become so big that there was no way back. I started on yet another journey which by way of regression therapy, I was able to start plugging some holes and making some really profound realizations about myself. All the while, continuing to have these intermittent pivotal moments in my life, affirming established truths that I had buried. I started to feel like my wall was cracking, but I could not allow that! Nobody could be allowed in! I started feeling some emotions in a really profound and disturbingly powerful way and these moments would occur at really random and sporadic times. I now started seeing the direct link in showing up in an authentic way and being able to show emotion, and this knowledge forced me to constantly do introspection and unpack why I was feeling a certain way. I generally overthink things, and this new found ritual had me constantly checking my head space and dissecting everything that I was experiencing. I added personal development to all of this, and the heightened awareness I was able to tap into now started pointing me squarely in the direction of showing up as authentic, but more so, it had led me to understand that I need to lead a purposeful life and by default, I had to do everything with purpose! I am on the journey, so it is only natural that all of this will take time before I can say that I am living my life purposefully and the authenticity in the way I show up is still a work in progress.
I choose to continue on this path, knowing fully that not everybody will understand nor will they like it, but hey, it's my journey and nobody else but me needs to understand it!
I will be purposeful and I will be brave! I have nothing to lose, and a life of purpose to gain! I have kids that need to see that the world doesn't need to be all bad and that they can lead well-balanced meaningful lives and be emotionally present.
I haven't completed my journey, but I know I have started making some clear progress in getting myself somewhere close to opening up to who I truly am.
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