slow changes
i take time to process. often far too long by conventional standards (whatever they are at different points in time and in different contexts). i have to spell out things to myself to truly ‘work through’ them. while i sense and feel that something is surfacing (something like intuition), i have to work hard and wait even harder for understanding what this ‘something’ is.
so, i have come to some conclusions, slowly but surely:
it is okay to not know exactly where my life is going, to not know anything. matters need to ‘ripen’. life is going to happen somehow and all i can do is try and be in the moment, pay attention, live fully.
i don’t need to have an immediate response to anything. i don’t need to decide anything right now.
it is important to make room (spacetime) for things to surface, for feelings, memories to arrive, for darkness to clear up, for light to enter.
even if it looks like nothing is happening, that is just the ‘looks’ from the outside. i don’t need to care about that. i don’t need to measure my speed against some arbitrary standard.
spelling things out is an exercise that makes experiences tangible, to go deep. first and foremost for myself. what were the sensations, feelings, the moods, the tensions, attractions, aversions, fears contained in an experience? it is a shortcut to just label an experience as good or bad and bury it somewhere in the soul (and assume it won’t surface, if i bury it deep enough).
in a way, to truly understand what happened, i have to go through the experience again in my own mind & soul (thinking through it and trying to recreate what i felt) - i know that isn’t possible, it is always subjective, this recreation of an experience, always an interpretation. but i think that writing helps - it doesn’t require the immediacy of a verbal ‘response’ - during writing, as i think about how to express things, i generate my own understanding. i look at something from different angles, i can go back and refine what i’m trying to express, i can try to come closer to what this ‘something’ really was or is.
of course this is always an approximation. how to you put words to childhood or youth experiences, when back then you didn’t know the words to express what ‘something’ was?
or in my case, i didn’t know the language(s) i now prefer to use for my writing. mostly english, but increasingly also spanish. using these languages allows me to focus more, it requires more attention than using my mothertongue. which is actually an austrian-german dialect that is quite different from written german, so i’m used to this process of translating thoughts in dialect into another written language.
using english and spanish kind of slows down the process for me. but in a good way. i have to make sure that the words and phrases transport what i want to say (write). they aren’t just languages, but methods for me.
i have been writing in english most of my adult life, first in a professional context, then for my studies, and now to write what i feel i need to write about.
in a way, by spelling things out, by expressing things in writing, at some point we eventually know what we know (even if very little), even though it was buried before (under armour or thick skin or ignorance).
so, i’ll continue with the observing, journaling, reflecting, thinking ‘too much’, overthinking, analyzing, engaging with what arrives in meaningful conversations, writing it all down.
i’ll continue to learn how to medidate, how to put in trust, patience, allowing myself to surrender to the process, how to have faith. pablo d’ors says: meditating is easy = pararse, callar, escuchar y mirar. what is difficult is to want to. so i’ll try again and again, to want to.
ultimately, at least for me, meaning follows from an intuitively felt disturbance, the feeling that there is ‘something’ that wants to surface, that needs attention, that needs questions to myself to come out from wherever it was hiding or hidden, putting words, language to it and an attempt at turning meaning into understanding. never final. always subject to reinterpretation, to another pass at it.
by taking time, by being slow (not intentionally i swear), by making space for attention, even if it regards past experiences and takes us away from the here and now, we ‘earn’ deeper understanding, we generate meaning.
we train our attention and are able to live fragments of time more intensly going forward.
