To Love Self

Falling in Love With Who I Am

Our understanding of the story that we’re living is an original. No one else can tell that story. That’s because the place where our interior landscape meets the external world is unique in the universe. It’s the one and only threshold of its kind.

And part of the work of the storyteller, or anyone who communicates a narrative, which is essentially everyone, is to know that inner landscape well, to discover its environs, its contours and its essence. If we are not intrigued with the possibilities of that discovery, we won’t get very far. If we haven’t seen something beautiful in that landscape, if we haven’t peered far into the caverns of our own being trying to discern what that glinting light is and what that faint sparkle might be, we are in danger of becoming destitute in our grasp on who we are. To not know ourselves signals a lack of enthusiasm and exposes a lack of pursuit. If we don’t fall in love with ourselves, not in the Narcissus way, but in the sense of genuine appreciation for the deposits hidden beneath the surface, if we don’t learn to recognize, value and love those things, we are powerless to have meaningful exchanges with our surroundings. Our story will lack color.

So we might ask, “how do I move to that level of learning to know myself and to begin to appreciate, and even assign value to those things?”

David Whyte says in What to Remember When Waking: The Disciplines of Everyday Life that there are questions that have no right to go away. Each of us has unique questions that belong to us. If they were to go away, we would be less of ourselves and less in the world. They are germane to being “emancipated” into the next level of our lives. Learning what our own unique questions are, maybe identifying those stubborn and persistent questions may be a good starting place.

For almost a decade I’ve been wrestling with some questions that are Big. They have to do with the structures in our culture that are meant to provide meaning and facilitate human potential. It’s been a long stumbling forward to try to get some kind of foothold of understanding. Recently I’ve realized I may have been asking someone else’s questions, or the ones that I’m expected to ask. I’ve been asking either/or questions and general inquiry questions in hopes of getting some kind of emotional relief.

Now I am asking, “What should I be asking? What is it that I, in my life’s context, need to know about? What kinds of questions are going to produce answers that matter to me as an individual, that will move the unique meaning of my life out into the world?”

Those questions are driving the expedition of self-knowledge. I am discovering some nuggets and following their lead, like breadcrumbs leading home to the place where I’m finding my truest self and learning to love her.

What questions are uniquely yours?

Writing Prompt for the Week: Following the Breadcrumbs