Tag: self development

On the Riverbank

I am on the riverbank. In front of me, a river of my thoughts, feelings, emotions. Not a peaceful river. It’s loud and turbulent, twisting in its bed, mesmerizing. A moment later — and I am caught by the current. Attracted by a random thought, I become part of the river. I become my emotions and feelings. I am struggling with the rest of the river, fighting. Fighting something. Fruitlessly. Hopelessly. Was there ever a riverbank? Was that just an illusion?

This metaphor of the river and the riverbank is helpful in describing my cognitive processes. I habitually live in the past or in the future, beating myself up about something I’d done or fretting about something that may happen. It takes effort to be in the present.

It took me a while to see that “being in the present” does not mean forcefully ignoring the past or the future. It’s about being apart from them, just on the side, on the riverbank. When I am on the riverbank, I can hold my emotions lightly, without getting entangled in them. I can sense my feelings as reactions to emotions. I can see my thoughts arise and let go of them. An observer, not an actor. There’s so much clarity and crisp understanding in these moments, in such contrast to the murky, unruly river.

I am realizing that I spend most of my life in the river. After a stressful day, I often marvel at the sheer power of the river’s pull and how closely it held me, had me nearly forget about the existence of the riverbank. I can go days and weeks trying, and failing to find it.

But I’ve felt the beauty and peace of the riverbank. I want to practice, and develop new habits to find my way to it more often. In the harshest tempest of my emotions, I want to learn how to stand on the riverbank and make my choices, rather than having the choices make me.

Puzzle Me

Where do I end? Where does the “outside of me” begin? These questions seem simple at first and evoke answers involving epidermis, but I am discovering that my boundary has little to do with molecular structures. Rather, I perceive my boundary in the social context, in relation to others around me. Such boundaries tend to be rather ill-defined and ambiguous. As a result, I often experience the boundary crises: the mismatches in my understanding of where the boundary actually lies. To help me make sense of these crises, I have a fun metaphor.

In this metaphor, I am a puzzle. There are many pieces of feelings, needs, identities, fears and aspirations in me-as-puzzle. This puzzle is quite unusual in that it’s near-infinitely complex and–ever so slightly–constantly changing. No matter how much I work on assembling the puzzle, it always seems like I barely started. But this puzzle is how I define my Self, so am steadily compelled to keep working on it, consciously or not. Some pieces fit just right. Some I still haven’t figured out where they belong. Some look curiously out of place.

Other people are puzzles, too. They have their own bits and pieces that they are fitting together. It’s a lot of puzzles.

Sometimes, I get confused and decide that pieces of other people’s puzzles are mine. In such cases, my imagined design of a puzzle creates a boundary crisis of insufficiency. Because I view these foreign puzzle bits as requirements for completing my Self, I am doomed to suffer: these pieces will never be fully mine, and I will never feel sufficient. I will never feel like I am good enough or at peace with who I am.

My impostor syndrome is a good example here. It’s that underlying belief that my accomplishments define my worthiness. That is, I define my self-worth by how others value what I’d done. I crave that missing puzzle piece of others’ approval. I can’t fathom how my puzzle could be complete without it, and yet I can never own it.

The opposite also happens. I may decide that my puzzle pieces are necessary for completing other people’s puzzles. This creates the boundary crisis of overwhelment. Seeing bits of my Self as critical in others’ lives, I am also doomed to suffer: I will always feel overwhelmed trying to co-assemble multiple puzzles, rather than just focusing on mine.

For example, when I avoid giving a colleague unpleasant feedback because I am overcome with anxiety that they will take it poorly, I assuming responsibility for how they would receive that news. All of the workarounds and clever techniques that follow are me trying to complete their puzzle with my pieces.

Now, I have plenty of cases of both. I have been putting this puzzle together all my life, and doing so mostly unconsciously. I grabbed others’ pieces and tried jamming them in, and I took plenty of responsibility for others’ puzzles. My puzzle is a mess, with tons of opportunities for suffering.

To reduce this suffering, I systematically examine me-as-puzzle, remove foreign pieces, and take back the pieces that are mine. It sounds easy, but given the decades of lodged pieces in this massive, unique collage that is me, it is quite challenging. Remove a piece, and whole swaths of the puzzle suddenly become unmoored, world temporarily seizing to making sense. It’s a high-risk proposition. If I am not that puzzle that I was before, then who am I? Where do others end? Where do I begin?