Woke up to a cool windy morning. Significant drop in temperature plus gusty breezes.
Wind is not my favorite. Sometimes I try to wall myself off from it. But no matter how deep into a building I go, if it’s windy the wind will find me.
If I can make myself, what works better is to go out for a walk; errands. Be in the wind.
When I get home I still want my calm desk with no papers blowing around, no unsettling sounds of rushing air snaking its way into the deepest innermost crannies of indoors, disturbing my equilibrium.
But, the walk (or bicycle ride) still helps. Voluntarily being out in the wind helps me get over that unsettling feeling of never being able to escape the turbulence and noise no matter how much I coccoon myself.
I can think of some things in my life that this is an analogy or metaphor for.
Later:
This morning as I was out & about on my bicycle doing errands, various analogies from my life popped into my mind. They may not make sense to everyone, but anyway sharing for what it’s worth. Feel free to drop me a line and share your own analogies or ask me questions about mine.
• Trying to shrink the amount of space I take up, to placate roommates (this is way in the past; my housemates the past while have been super cool, but a long time ago I had an apartment-mate who always wanted / “needed” more and more space no matter how hard I tried to innovatively find ways to fit myself and my stuff into less space).
• Trying to present myself as more middle-class respectable to be less offensive to certain people.
• Trying to tone down my “weirdness.”
• Trying to mask feelings of social awkwardness; making an effort to be less dorky.
• Trying to tone-down my environmental communications to make them more palatable to Important Official People.
• Trying to keep my lawn super short and well-manicured so it doesn’t stick out even one centimeter from the other yards. (Actually I don’t really do this since I don’t have a lawn. But many of my neighbors do it and the results are hideous, not to mention incredibly damaging and possibly life-threatening as they undermine stormwater absorption and exacerbate heat-island effects. And, I myself have on occasion found myself trying to do this thing with trimming the vines, shrubbery etc.)
Basically the more we try to shrink, the more of a bottomless pit the monster’s tummy becomes. We can never shrink ourselves enough to satisfy that thing that’s coming for us. And there is no prize for being the biggest incredible shrinking martyr. The remedy is to stand up and own our (reasonable) boundaries, take up our full space of who we are.