Conversations with myself. #1
If anyone resonates with constantly seeing your approach to life through a right or wrong lens, then this conversation might feel familiar.
I tried to capture the inner angst that is often present for me and see if I could get some insight through enquiry and internal dialogue. From a psychological, personal development or spiritual POV, there’s lots of ways you could interpret what this pattern is about and where it comes from. And I can get lost and captivated by that analysis which (unhelpfully) helps me avoid feeling what I don’t what to feel. Fear of failure, fear of not being seen, fear of being trapped. Fear of fear even.
This is a conversation between myself, and myself, where I tried to get to the root of what’s going on.
Am I doing it right?
What do you mean?
I just need to know if I’m doing it right.
Doing what right?
What do you think? [Mild rage building] This! This thing, this life. This everything! Am I doing it RIGHT. Like, what’s the right way. I just need to know.
There is no right way.
Oh ffs.
There isn’t.
That doesn’t help me. I need to know if I’m doing it right. Just tell me and I can do that and stop torturing myself.
Sounds exhausting.
It is.
And quite dramatic.
[Silence]
What are you frightened of?
Because what if I get it wrong? What if I’m the only one not doing it right and then…
And then what?
I don’t know. I just need to know if I’m doing it right.
No, hang on. And then what?
Depends on what the thing is that I might not be doing right.
Pick one.
Ok well if I don’t get it right, I’ll get it wrong, I’ll get told off, I’LL be wrong and there will be the shame and humiliation and embarrassment of that and I’ll get rejected and then I’ll be insignificant, and I won’t have reached my potential whatever that is, I’ll be an abject failure and then I’ll just be some kind of average human and I’ll feel trapped and sad and disappointed and trapped and sad and disappointed and trapped and sad and disappointed. And it will never end and I’ll be stuck there in those feelings. Oh and I won’t have any money and I won’t have a nice place to live. Maybe I’ll end up living in some cold cave. And then what if I get ill, then I won’t be able to work or do anything and then it’s just going to get worse. And then the roof collapses in on me.
Is that everything?
Hang on. [Checking.]
If I know the right way, then I can feel safe. I’m not going to feel all of those things. I mean who would want to feel those things? So surely it’s just easier to know what the right way is? And then I won’t be wrong!
There is no right way.
Well, you keep saying that but I think there is. Other people seem to be doing it the right way.
What the f does that mean?
They seem to get it right. They have good lives, good jobs, happy times.
And you haven’t had that?
Not consistently.
And you think ‘those people’ have? Consistently?
[Thinking]
I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.
You think you’re the only one to struggle, to have challenges, to feel like you want more? You think you’re the only one on the planet to feel that?
Well…I don’t know.
You think you’re so uniquely flawed that you’re THE ONLY PERSON the universe/GOD/the Krankies has picked to feel all of what you described?
THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG. There is only you experiencing the moment, making choices and decisions to the best of your ability with the best of intentions. And don’t. I know you’re now thinking about whether your ability is ‘good enough’. You are made up of a unique set of ingredients who gets to play at this life and see what happens. You get to have a go. There is no right or wrong to it. Your right is someone else’s wrong and vice versa. How are you ever going to know what the right way is on that basis? It’s impossible to track and it changes all the time.
There is only the doing it, the feeling it, the trying it, the playing at it. The being it.
What do you want?
To be free.
Well just do that then. Is there a right way to be free?
No. Ok, I think I’m starting to get it now.
