A motionless panic of not being worthy, of not being seen, of being judged. Constrained by wire fences, unseen. What do you do? The options, please. Feeling it? Digging out where the fear derives from, yet again? Or turn your attention to something more pleasant, for once? Or being productive so as to mitigate the feeling of unworthiness? Do you go and confirm capitalism – the power that fed you with the “your worth equals productivity” formula – cloaked as well-meant, norm undermining efforts?
How do we get our sense of worth back? I mean our real worth. That, which is not dependent on what we do, how much we do, or how well we do it. We need a good deep breath. The air is fresh. The flower fields swayed by the wind, wave just fine without our meddling. The bees collect flower dust by themselves just fine, without our help. The waters ebb and flow in the silvery moonlight just fine, without our interference. The world won’t stand still if we do. It will be just fine.
Having said that, I must add, that as a fiery person I love being productive. I find excitement in being active. Going after one project and another, and another. But attaching my sense of personal worth to my performance just hurts. That nasty wound seems to be so deep, patterned so tightly into webs that go beyond my mere persona, that no individual inner work seems to target the issue well enough. That nasty wound is woven beyond my individual tissues. It is embroidered in the collective that birthed me. I can go into the woods and live there anchoretic as much as I want, and still, I won’t be able to erase the collective web pattern out of my existence.
I was birthed into it. Not only did it mark me. It marked my relationships, the patterning of my ties to all the things, ideas, and people that I relate to. It marked the body that is me, but also beyond me. The body that I have access to, but is the collective.
My wound is not my wound alone. Therefore, I can’t heal it alone, reclusive. Touch me, I touch you. We’ve been touched. By the hand that prints moles on people’s bodies. They say mole patterns are hereditary. I say they are star marks on our skins as skies. The stars never tell an individual story. Their story is broader, generational, intergenerational, archetypal.