One of my Twitter friends, whollyjeanne (you’ll find her at the barefoot heart on my links on the sidebar), included me in a tweet from Coach Dian. It’s one of those challenge things. Dian came across this installation from a Burning Man festival, and the moment I clicked on the link and saw this piece, I knew I was in. Without even reading about it, you sense the mission statement.
The challenge is to take the twelve topics the installation explores, with a thirteenth added by Dian, and write about them during the month of June. So you know what? I’m going to. And I’m going to start with self-awareness.
Sounds so obvious – self-awareness. We’re with ourselves 24/7. But I’ve been feeling a little lost lately as to who I am, and since I’m 63 years old, you’d think I’d have a handle on this by now. But I’m retired – I’m not anchored by a job or a routine, and I’ve done several lifetimes of community and volunteer work and I don’t want to do that anymore. I’ve been in charge of enough people and jobs and I don’t want to go to one more committee meeting or be in charge of anything other than a dinner party ever again. I’ve become schedule-averse. I’ve become an artist.
Solving this whole conundrum of why I lose myself started with a realization about my mother. Regular readers know my mom is in and out of dementia in various stages, which seem to be tied to my father’s level of alertness. That doesn’t surprise me. They’ve been married over 65 years and they are so intricately intertwined that one can’t exist without the other. (Do you know, my sister went over there the other day and our parents were on the coach holding hands? They do that frequently.)
Family is the obvious place to begin to define self-awareness – who we are. Frida Kahlo’s painting My Grandparents, My Parents, and I is a good start on the journey. Knowing where you came from helps you know who you are, and artists are ever looking inward.
I don’t think I really know who my mom is deep down. I used to tell her what a mystery she was to me. Now I understand, and the explanation is the same as to why visitors say, “There’s nothing wrong with your mom. She seems fine to me.” It’s because my mom’s public self was the only self we saw. Years and years of good manners and routine actions have enabled her to appear normal. She knows the questions you should ask visitors, what kinds of greetings to give, how to comment generally on the weather, how to inquire as to health and family. As a mother, she was outwardly-focused in giving us stability so we didn’t see what was inside her.
This question of self-awareness is timely because just days ago, I understood that I do what my mom did – in groups, at events, with friends even, I jump into a public self and I disappear. I carry an inner tension that I’ve not actually recognized before now. There are very few people with whom I am completely relaxed. Well, maybe that’s not true. Perhaps “relaxed” is the wrong word. Because it’s the social situations, the groups, in which I disappear. For whatever reason, it’s with young people that I feel most like myself. (I guess that’s one reason I was a good seventh-grade teacher.)
Somehow, getting older and I hope wiser, I’ve become passive. Things don’t bother me, I don’t get all fussed at other people, I just try to understand. I find it hard to imagine why anyone would be interested in me, yet I write reams of my deepest self on this blog for the whole world to read. And you know what? Proving my theory a bit about not knowing a parent, I printed out six months of my blog and gave it to my dad to read. He needs things to do; his 92-year-old body doesn’t cooperate in allowing him to be as physically active as he was. His reaction? He told me he’s learning a whole lot he didn’t know about his daughter. So maybe I’ve been my public self with my family even.
Getting back to the passivity, while it’s nice to move forward on an even keel, something needs to fill the places that used to be jammed with everyday, garden-variety tensions, turmoil, and trivial matters. I fear I am becoming, or perhaps have already become, boring. I don’t want to be boring. But the reflective me has disappeared also. That is not a good thing, according to Plato (amazing how Plato pops up all the time), who says the unexamined life is not worth living.
Pushing myself to explore self-awareness will help my real, authentic self to re-emerge, but only if I keep the door unlocked. To do that, I have to remain self-aware. It’s just a giant circle after all, like the tee pee in the art installation. I think I know who I am; I just have to be me. That’s what I’m going to work on. Just being me. I may find, just be being myself, that I don’t know myself so well after all.
What a hornet’s nest this self-awareness has stirred up! Then again, I could just go with Oscar Wilde, who said “Only the shallow know themselves,” and “The final mystery is oneself.”
Note: I’m unable to attribute the image of the eye – I found it on an autism blog with no identifying information.
Tags: authenticity, blog challenge, passivity, self-awareness, self-evidence
Susan- I dont think the word boring would ever be associated with you! Actually I think you are one of the most interesting (not sure that is the right word-but it will have to do) people I know.
Chris