For the last three weeks I have not been myself. I have been in pain and it alters everything. I have been less active, I have been stuck in the house a lot and I have been different, I think. Last Monday I sucked it up and went to teach my first drama class with The Overflow Foundation. I couldn’t do a proper warm up with them due to the pain in my back and leg and although I tried to “act” like I felt fine, I didn’t. As part of the lesson I asked them to play a little get to know each other game and I realized that some of the students were not very enthused and others were being over the top in their role playing, although they only had been asked to be themselves. I got to thinking how hard it is for any of us to really be ourselves.
I had a professor who talked about her precious little girl often in class. One of many things that stuck with me was when she talked about how free and natural children that age were and how we get “domesticated.” That idea stuck with me. She talked about how we should breathe while warming up, making our bellies relaxed. We tend to be tense, always trying to hold those stomachs in! Little kids, she pointed out, have little “Buddha bellies” because they are relaxed, free and breathing deeply as we all should. Of course, she was right. I have tried since then to relax my belly when I do yoga or work out. Everyone else in the gym is pulling in that gut, but I try not to! (Now when I get dress up, that is a whole different story!)
I thought about the hard lives some of these kids I teach have had. I imagine they may not really know who they are. Do any of us? We are changed by our parents and teachers “domesticating” us, by the bad things and the wonderful things that happen in our lives, by the people we decide to emulate and therefore lose some of ourselves in exchange for trying to be them, for anything that makes us alter what we would naturally do and then do something different. Don’t get me wrong- we have to grow as we age, we have to change our behavior to be good people who fit into society. But I also think that we lose parts of ourselves along the way that we might should have held onto. And it is nearly impossible to go back, to remember who we were as kids, where we were headed before we began molding and changing our lives.
I feel like I lost a bit of myself across the years. I can see the changes from who I was as a child, to who I was as a teenager, to who I was as a young adult, to who I am as a not so young adult. It is fairly dramatic. I have seen other people around my age realize how they have changed and flip out, giving up marriages and jobs in the process of “finding themselves”. (Think middle age crazies!”) With the support of a great husband and son, I have been able to put behind me some of the negative things that have changed me and regain some of the things that bring me joy and who I really was meant to be. I wish everyone could have that kind of support and take the time to explore their life in a calm way.
But how do you teach a bunch of teenagers who are so worried about who will make fun of them or what people might say to let go and just be? How do you get any of us to relax enough to keep that belly out and do silly things on stage that others will judge you for? How do any of us really know who we are completely and walk every moment in confidence, sure that we are doing what we are meant to be?
My back finally got worked on today and in the midst of this my mother has taken very ill and is in intensive care. I know that she is nowhere near being who she might have been. She turned her whole life over to my father and he took her 180 degrees away from what she wanted, hoped for and believed. When I talked to her today she wanted to do something, but wouldn’t because it might upset my father. I told her it was about her, not him at this point. She told me it was never about her. In this day and age of me, me, me, it should be refreshing to hear such selflessness and devotion, but it wasn’t. It only made me sad and a little bit angry.
So, how do we find the middle ground, loving and doing for others while not losing ourselves? Fitting into polite society while keeping the edge that makes us unique? How much do we need to go back and try to discover the real “me” and how much do we just accept who we have become? Pain for 3 weeks has changed me, but I will return. Watching my mom in such a weak state has changed me, and I may not get over it. But I can at least hope to grow from watching her, learning things to do and not do. Ever evolving, ever growing, ever contemplating.
