Today, I was talking with my friend and reflecting on how weeks before, I felt like I didn’t belong and how today, having done work on it, I find that I’m not experiencing that feeling.
His response was to point out, in an encouraging way, that I stayed who I am but that now I’m processing it differently.
I said that’s not how I’m experiencing it. I told him that my experience is that I am a completely different person.
I had been “the guy who doesn’t belong.’ I inquired into that guy and found that he disintegrated into imagination. That he wasn’t really there. I realized that the idea of a “me” is entirely fluid and invented in the moment…EVERY moment I’m aware of a “me.” That it is completely malleable and subject to my thinking and believing. I told him that in this moment, I do not experience “not belonging” in this “me” that I’m constructing now. That in this moment I’m “the guy who does belong.”
When I think I have to stay “me” I find that I get stuck, I limit what I can do, especially if I’m carrying around a stressful identity.
I find that a stable “me” is an illusion. A story constructed from curated moments of an imagined past. It is not an actual thing.
The truth of my “me”ness is that it’s not there except in the moment of perception. And because the universe is constantly shifting, every part of it influencing and being influenced by every other part - who I am never stays the same. I am a completely different person than the guy who started typing this sentence. And now I’m someone else entirely.
When I allow myself to accept that, I am free.
When I fight to retain an identity, I am locking myself in a dream. And dreams can be wonderful. But when the identity is stressful (“I don’t belong” “My body is disgusting” “No one trusts me” “I suck at paperwork”) I’m imprisoning myself in a recurring nightmare.
The process of healing is a process of allowing “who I am” to shift with the benevolent truth of the universe. Who I am is an entirely different person every moment of my life.
And the beautiful thing about constantly becoming a different person is that each person’s whole past and whole future shifts with it.
I have been a guy who doesn’t belong and I have allowed myself to become a guy who does belong. When I was the guy who doesn’t belong, my past was filled with events where I didn’t belong. But now that I’m the guy who does belong (who will I be in 10 seconds?), my past is filled with events where I belonged (and they look like the exact same events).