I hesitated before typing out a succinct answer (yes, we were texting).
It was hard to answer this question. I do not even know whether I am discovering more about myself.
OK, let's ignore what I just said so I can change my previous answer into this:
I do know I am discovering more about myself, but I don't know what I am discovering exactly.
There. Shit. I should have said that instead to her, dammit!
But really, I usually don't find out what I've learned until years later, looking back to where I used to be and counting the number of steps I took from that point up to now. That's when I can measure how much I've grown since then and what lessons I've chosen to carry within my heart, within my mind and within my soul.
When I was living in Mendoza, Argentina for a month, depression began to rise inside me. At first, I was somewhat pertified and very, very embarrassed by this soul-sucking emotion. How could I feel that way when I was living out one of my many dreams?
I was not fluent in Argentinean Sign Language (LSA) and was often mocked for this and for the fact I never mastered the art of lip-reading. I was constantly exhausted from trying desperately to fit in and from cultural shock, especially Deaf cultural shock. I beat myself up quite a lot for what I initially saw as my epic failure as a decent global citizen. I felt alone and lonely in my own experience.
Three months later, I was beyond grateful and even ecstatic for this lonely time in Argentina.
This experience fed the fire within me that prompted me to become even more determined about forming my experience in Chile, where I spent a month after Argentina. I threw myself completely into the Deaf Chilean culture. I insisted on using Chilean Sign Language all the time. I demanded for respect towards my background (especially the fact that I suck at reading lips).
Because of Argentina, I learned to adjust better to life in Chile. Because of Argentina, I grew stronger in spirit and hungrier for more challenges.
Five years later, I am thinking of Argentina with great love and admiration. I long to return to Argentina simply to appreciate its culture more with my wiser, happier and more experienced self.
I saw my twenty-year-old self as very young, very naive and full of wild imagination. I applauded her courage to live in a different country without even a thought about how difficult it might be. I understood her despair when she realized that the world out there is not exactly what she had imagined. I was proud of her willingness to see more of the world and to find a way to love Argentina.
It took me months and years to measure my growth from the time spent in Argentina. Even now, I am still overwhelmed by the sheer power my experiences in Argentina has over me and am still measuring its influence over me.
Billions of experiences, some as small as a second and some as big as a decade, had passed in my life, and I could measure my growth based on a very small number of them. As for the rest, it is taking other experiences to give me a way to better measure, to better understand, and to better see the discoveries I am making about myself. These other experiences have not happened yet and I am still waiting to find out how every experience in my life is connected to every other experience.
Sometimes I wonder perhaps I am not actually trying to discover more about myself.
Maybe I don't really care what I will find out about myself.
Maybe I care more about giving up on myself, as in coming to terms with myself and simply accepting whoever I am.
That is what I want, all I ever want, from myself: unconditional self-love.
Maybe I believe that when I can fully and totally love myself without criticizing myself, annoying the hell out of myself, putting myself on guilt trips, and all the other conditions that make my love seems so undeserving for myself, I can too love others fully and totally.
Maybe I will learn how to love anybody and everybody in this world without criticizing them, annoying the hell out of them, putting them on guilt trips, and all the other conditions that make my love seems so undeserving for them.
It is possible that love has no price and that I alone fooled myself into believing that I must pay the non-existent price to love myself and others by insisting upon perfection and other specific conditions from myself and others.
These maybes are the thoughts that are coming more and more often to me after years of mining gems from life experiences.
For now, I am thinking that through discovering more about myself, I am unlocking a part inside me that has imprisoned me from loving myself and others freely.
Perhaps the more I discover, the freer I will be to love.
Or maybe I am just fooling myself.
Who knows? I am still measuring that--or still trying to give up.
Oh, man.
What's life without a bit of play?
No comments:
Post a Comment