The Face to be Found What to do to be me Somedays I am wise Somedays I am a child Somedays I feel like a fully fledged woman Whatever that means Somedays I am nowhere to be found Somedays all I want to do is hide Somedays you cannot shut me up Somedays I just want to spread all the love I feel in my heart Somedays I want to protect the underdog Somedays I want to just let it be Trusting that there must be someone greater than me Doing their job Somedays I am the monks from the monastery Somedays I am my immigrant family back in My imaginary childhood home Somedays I am the new friends I’ve met When I was all on my own Who am I when I am so changeable Let me know if you can find me I’ve stopped counting the many selves I’ve found Is it cliche to say the journey is in the discovery? Because that way I can really be at peace Without pretending that I have met The real or better me But…somedays I do pretend to be cool When really I am a bit eccentric but Trying hard to seem “normal” Somedays I don’t catch myself doing all of this I’ve lost sleep over meeting my countless selves To see them come and go What to do to be me When I am the accumulation Of the people and experiences in my life I no longer grasp and I no longer hide Because something’s got to give! The Presence I am alone in the moments When I am both near the truest thing That nourish me from the inside Where does this self go When I am not meeting them In the water On a mountain On a canvas In front of a blank page Where does this self go When I am too busy And momentum strikes in my life With things and people to attend to Yet, When it all falls away And my responsibilities have disappeared It comes back again Quiet and tempting When I think this self has left me forever When I think I have betrayed myself I meet them Once again In the water On a mountain On a canvas In front of a blank page Patient and loyal as ever I am here I am home To this self I will always be known
I once heard the poet David Whyte say that the phrase, “Be Yourself” is the least helpful thing you can say to a person.
The first poem you heard is talking about the struggle of meeting our true selves. In my opinion, due to our struggle and our need to fit in, sometimes we find ourselves being anything but ourselves. It is the very essence of human nature that our environment, including the places and the people to whom we are surrounded by, makes up a large proportion of who we are and who we become.
No matter our age, I am certain that at some point in our lives, we were uncertain about who exactly inhabited this body of ours. As a twenty nine year old, let me also add that my twenties have been about finding who I thought was “myself” to lose it all again and feel uncertain and unable to hold any ground of self assuredness.
Is self assuredness even the ground that we should seek to be standing on?
The second poem talks about when we first come to meet this self in a real way. We are lucky if we can find a place that allows this self to come out into the world and be met by us and by others.
In my opinion, this is normally stimulated by some kind of activity. An activity that brings us into the the moment and somehow, we feel like “ourselves.” Somehow, in this space, all the masks, the effort, the many faces fall away and we are met with something that feels eternal. It is not a jumpy kind of feeling. It is highly intuitive, it is present and in flow, it is everything and nothing at once.
I meet this self when I am painting. I find all the barriers or pretence drop away when the paint brush touches the blank wall and I am fully present. I also meet this self, in a slightly different way when I am writing. On a blank page, I am honest with myself. In both times, the voice I hear back and intuit is accepting. It tells me that all is as it should be. It shows me the bigger picture of life. And lately, I have also been meeting this self when I am in front of the prayer table. Looking into the eyes of the Buddha whilst muttering the prayers on the mala beads, I feel an immense amount of love.
I know that in my sister’s case, this is when she is outdoors and doing active things, activities like being in the water surfing or figuring out a route to climb on a climbing wall.
We are lucky if we can find this presence. It is a self that nourishes us deeply, and I believe that we don’t have to do a particular kind of activity to meet this presence. It is always there but having activities that nourish is in our lives helps us to get in touch with that presence more so.
But, there also comes a point in our lives where we also meet another self. A self that gives and offers to others. After all, we are living a human life and part of what every one of us as human beings go through is our need to find “ourselves” but also to translate that in a way that is most authentic and honest to the external world.
Let me tell you that this isn’t always easy! We are not only up against many voices, but I think especially at this day and age with our strong presence on social media, we have a challenge of portraying this honesty and authenticity to our digital faces as well. And let me tell you that this isn’t always easy!
The question I currently hold in my life, perhaps the biggest and most mysterious of all questions I have had so far to date, is how my face meets the world. In finding art, in finding painting and poetry, I now seek to give and offer from this space of nourishment to others.
I think this self, the self that we meet in activities that nourish us, feeds into our giving and offering for others externally. But the funny thing is that, right now, I am realising that we don’t have to make them identical.
Someone recently told me that, as artists, we see ourselves synonymously with our art.
That means, if a part of us feel shy or wants to hide, our giving (of art) hides along with this self. If a part of us is critical or doubtful, our giving (of art) remains in the space of uncertainty.
But we can give and share in a different way to what nourishes us without losing a sense of nourishment. What nourishes us can still be present but we can allow it to have a bit of a breathing space so that this nourishment has the opportunity to meet another- be it an environment or a person.
I think that this is very relevant for artists to contemplate on, as I am recently doing so myself. This is deep I know. I am still peeling the layers of this realisation as well.
The main thing is the space we can leave when our “being ourselves” meet the external world.
For artists, I guess this will be the space we allow to exist so that our artwork is not just a form of our own nourishment but something we practice so that we can give it to someone else, so they can feel the kind of nourishment we feel.
But that form of giving can look even so slightly different than what we imagine or think it should be. Because what nourishes all of us will vary. It can look similar but different- the same sense of nourishment can still be there regardless of the form it takes.
In this way, we are accepting ourselves. We are also giving and offering from a space of nourishment from within and with love.
This also means that we can use our humanly bodies and minds and work with our souls to create our livelihoods and an exchange of energy. That is important as a human being. We are always finding ways to self-actualise; to exert our energy into what is meaningful for us.
So to conclude this rather contemplative and personally insightful topic, I hope, that no matter the faces you meet this week, you find the things that nourish you. I hope you can also reveal this nourished self in a form that truly gives, offers and nourishes another without being dishonest or harsh to the soul inside.
Contemplations
:
What nourishes you?
How do you nourish others?
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