The other day, Datin S and I were happily gushing over some delicious chocolate at
Awfully Chocolate. We were fresh from a hot, sweaty walk along the Rail Corridor. I then proceeded to expound on my possible greater love for gummy candies. At which point, Datin S exclaimed amusedly not for the first time, my apparent... freedom? She seemed to think that I had an inner freedom that supposedly... allowed me to love gummy candies, haha! but more importantly... to be whoever I wanted, however I wanted.
Her comment gave me some pause for thought. I think I have always known my personal particularities. I hesitate to say, don't we all? Because I am learning... that perhaps not everyone knows themselves as well as I expect them to. I have always known, for instance, that I love gummy candy; in fact, you don't have to go too far back on this blog for a post about my dreaming of a life-sized gummy bear in heaven, hehe. I also have many other clear favourites, don't I -- the stuff that I fangirl from whence I was small. A very clear, I like this, and zeroing straight in on it. I have a very clear memory of discovering the love of reading: I must have been six or seven years old, and I had discovered Enid Blyton's Wishing Chair series. I remember thinking how amazing it was that I could go to these limitless places in my imagination, just through the simple task of reading words. In retrospect, I feel grateful to have had such a loud internal voice from the get-go. I may not have been outspoken from very young, but I was always very loud and clear in my own head.
At some point, I think this loud and clear voice became the very reason I struggled emotionally for so very long through my younger years. There was a very obvious tension between my internal experience and the external world, that I had no choice but to attend to it earlier on, and face my self. This blog certainly bears witness. Perhaps, having had to butthead so openly my strong internal motivations has led me to synthesize a new space for coexistence. It's like that
sacred paradox Carl Jung talks about, and that I read in Robert Johnson's
Owning Your Own Shadow:
When the unstoppable bullet hits the impenetrable wall, we find the religious experience.
Basically, I somehow got to a place where I allowed my internal voice to live (I suppose it was so strong to begin with, there was no suppressing it for long, thank goodness); and I no longer punished it for being different from the world. For not fitting in with the accepted ego or persona. I honestly struggle to put this process into words, because the abstractness of it all still trips me up as well.
Anyway, this is perhaps what Datin S alluded to about inner freedom? She is right if she means that I have come to a space where I do not judge myself; I just am, most of the time. I just try and be. I love gummy bears! why not. I am a million other things, I am not a million other things as well, and it's all fine, Alhamdulillah. It is good and peaceful and happy.
It's not that I do not have dreams or desires; quite the contrary! I still have very deep, strong emotions that have not waned, and the voice loudly shouting at times about where I should go, as I am used to. But there's a big, wide space where everything is allowed to run its course, and settle down at a healthy middle. From some corner, I am also kindly looking down at all of this happening, while we figure it out together. With this level of busyness internally, who has time for the external? I basically don't. Besides, why should it matter to the external world that I love gummy bears, say. In recent times, the starkest difference in manifestation of all this internal change has been a drastic reduction in wanting to prove myself to anyone, or even correct any misinterpretation. There was a time when people's seemingly incorrect perceptions of me used to rub against me like sandpaper; but now, I have very surreal moments of... utterly not caring. Like a calm indifference to anyone's thoughts and feelings of me; it is a startling experience. But a good one, I suppose.
