Wiping Clean the Window to my Heart
I value what I’m calling transparency these days. In fact, I’m finding it is an essential part of my integrity. I have lived much of my life defining myself based on my assumptions about the expectations of others, to the point of expending a colossal amount of energy trying to figure out who everyone wanted me to be and how I could be that, and ending up with countless versions of myself that I had trouble keeping track of. I carefully regulated what I said, which emotions I revealed and my behaviour based on what I believed was expected in a particularl context. The window to my heart has been covered in the dirt and grime of my projected expectations. As a result hardly anyone has ever seen me clearly.
And now I want to stop.
Last week I had the most exquisite experience. I spent a week in the mountains of North Carolina with five people I’d never met in real life before, but with whom I share two defining attributes. We are all writers, and wayfinders (as in Martha Beck certified Wayfinder Life Coaches). We had been meeting online for two years in a writers’ group initiated by one of the five, but apart from that we had never met.
What happened is something I am now calling an “essential self cleanse”.
Magically, in the presence of these people, the only version of myself I wanted to be was the actual me. All the time. In this context I felt no need to anticipate the expectations of others. I was able to be clear on who I am and what I want in each moment. It was an incredible gift.
Now, I want to be transparent ALL THE TIME. I want everyone to see through me and I want to stop projecting a created me for everyone else. I want to integrate all the versions of me, taking only the authentic pieces and tossing out the cheap imitations. I want to reassemble my essential self as the lead character in my life story and clean the dirt and grime of expectations off window to my heart. And I want everyone else to be transparent too. I don’t want to read between your lines, or wonder what you really think.
I want all of our essential selves to dance around a bonfire, laugh, cry, swim in the rain and only do things that are a HELL YES.