Before Ramadan began, I sat down and drafted a singular goal focused on self-exploration and understanding and decided to remove distractions in order to accomplish it. I’m only a week in and I had no clue how f-ing hard that was going to be.
When faced with having to stare head on into the abyss of the unknown and the glaring light of honesty, it becomes almost instinctive to turn away and look somewhere else. I discovered just how ingenious my brain is at devising distractions even when the external ones are removed. When I cut out Youtube, I would pick up my phone (because social media doesn’t count, right?) and when I hid away my phone, I would come up with tasks to fill my mind and worry about. When I finally would sit down in front of a paper and just face some honest truths I would get sleepy like a teenager being forced to do homework. I never take naps (!!) but my brain saw it fit to shut down operations in the middle of the day because the abyss was just too scary.
In taking a moment to reflect on this, I want to recognize the distractions that have been so consuming and I never realized just how much and the wave of inspiration that was distraction masked. I also want to recognize the progress to my goal in finally facing some of the terrifying questions I never dared to ask of myself. Even though my goal still stretches far ahead, I will keep trying, I will crawl to it through the terrifying abyss until I can open my eyes in the face of the glaring and blinding light.
What has been helping is using some tools that guide my search and exploration instead of just thinking about it and expecting the answers to emerge. So far, it has been drawing a map of myself and finding the empty holes, the small building bricks and the faint outlines of something that is there. This process has taken me through all kinds of emotions, a rollercoaster if you will, but I just want to make it clear that I’m not getting off. I’m going for round 2 with all the lessons from round 1.
This was written after a grueling week of trying to understand me.
Disclaimer: Always learning… Always evolving… For life. x