Good morning yous,
Happy effin Friday.
The weather's colder, a chill is in the air. I like this time of year.
It just occurred to me that Thanksgiving is next week. That's pretty crazy, I could have sworn it was at least two weeks away. Last night at group everyone was talking about their families and stuff around Thanksgiving. It seems everyone has their, ehem, misgivings about it.
I certainly have my stuff around it....everyone was going around and talking about their "angst" as we were calling it. Toward the end of group it was me and another person who were left and the group leader asked the other person to talk about their angst. They shared about work mostly. When it was time for me to go, it was at the end of group. I was both hoping for the opportunity to share about my stuff and relieved that I didn't have to. Either way, there was a definitive sense of emotional pain I felt and was able to hold while I listened to others share.
The thing about the pain was that it seemed to be self generated in a way. Like, the thoughts I had were more about whether I should share, whether people will listen, whether I even want to talk about my angst to begin with, when what I felt was sad. So when it came down to the end of the session, the part of me that was terrified to talk about my own stuff was relieved that I had an out.
I took it. I said I didn't feel it was a good space or time and that was true. I could have said something high-level. But I opted to exclude myself entirely from the discussion. That in and of itself caused the feeling of emotional pain to grow. If I had spoken up I don't know what I would have said. I wanted to keep my pain to myself. My voice felt so small.
How to speak up. When to speak up. When to speak at all. Most of the talking that I do is out of necessity. That's not necessarily a bad thing but sometimes I think I'd rather not talk at all. There are times when communicating with others can be fun. Parties. Concerts. Weekend time.
My mathematical mind wants to group these times of speaking into two categories: speaking out of need and speaking out of want. I think most of the time I feel I am speaking out of need because speaking at all, communicating, is ridden with anxiety. It is not a relaxing or calming thing for me most of the time. So I speak out of need most of the time. I can do it just fine on the whole, but it's not usually something I look forward to.
There's a party this weekend we're going to and that sounds fun. There I will speak out of want. I am looking forward to that.
When I speak out of want, the communication is easier. It can be fun. Engaging. When I speak out of need, communication simply must happen. When I don't speak at all, that can feel comforting, but if I don't speak out of fear, then I silence myself. What to do?
And then there's the whole reaching out to people thing. In order for communication to occur, in order for relationships to be built, one must reach out to other people and initiate contact sometimes. I feel I am not so good at this. Or, at the very least, this terrifies me.
I secretly want to reach out to people more, to just have conversations for the sake of conversations, but that want is really a need because I don't do it much. It's one I don't want to do. I'd rather observe from the sidelines. I can tell you everything that's going on, I can speak up if I need, but otherwise, I'd prefer to be on the outside. Is that true, though?
Sometimes I'd much rather be in the middle of the pack, surrounded by all sides with friends and people I admire. Sometimes that's the case. Sometimes I find myself there. The mystery to me is how that actually happens.
Family is such a basic thing that a lot of people tend to talk about it a lot. Other people, like myself, not so much. That's hard for me. When people talk about family I'm not sure how to relate. This isn't because I don't love my family, because I do, it's because I feel foreign there. It's like I was born into this thing and people told me stuff and I believed it. Aunts and uncles come to visit on the holidays. Oh, we're related. Oh, I can see a resemblance. No one actually has been able to explain to me what all of this is for, though.
What I'm saying is sometimes I have an incredible sense of being here right now but I don't necessarily have a sense of established familial lineage that some people have. A sense of groundedness through genetic lines. It all kind of feels random to me, sometimes. At least the initial roll of the dice.
And, who knows, maybe there's some larger purpose here. I mean, I tend to believe that this isn't my first go round on this jawn. In some belief systems, we have chosen this path before we were born. Now that gets into some heavy heady shit, especially when this present moment can be a lot to deal with sometimes. But that feels true to me. It feels true to me that the consciousness that is writing these words isn't confined to just the life of this body. I can feel the continuity of myself beyond this body. It feels here. It is here. I am here. That's all I can really say. What else is there to say? There is but one.
It saddens me that I have trouble connecting with my family. It saddens me that I don't reach out more. My family of origin are there and they are cool and they are people I am genetically related to. Beyond that, I'm not sure. They are human and I am a human.
I am alive and am grateful for that. I guess that's my connection. My family is my direct connection to life itself. If I view life as larger than just this body, then my family of origin are just that. They are humans and I am human and I happened to enter this realm and this time through this specific family. That feels true to me.
I've expressed this before at group, but it still feels a little weird to say elsewhere because I'm not sure how people will take this: I feel I have both originated from my family, my parents, and also that there's a fundamental part of me that's beyond that. I am consciousness and they are consciousness. Physically I was given birth to. At the level of consciousness I simply am. Both of those things are true to me.
From the perspective that we are all consciousness, which is essentially the same thing as saying we are all human, I can view myself and my family and other humans with compassion. From the perspective of birth and family and life processes, I struggle. And that's OK. The mental and emotional dirt that humans have to push through in order to get to the light of self is there for nourishment, in the same way plants rely on and push through the soil in order to grow.
So in terms of speaking up, for myself, the compassionate thing to do is to recognize when I want to speak up, when I want to share something with another human. And then to act on that. And also to be OK if I don't act on that. This stuff comes out one way or another, at the appropriate time.
Love,
Casey
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