52 Weeks Begin Now: Week Forty-Six: Making Space for Someone Else

Making Space for Someone Else?

Shelley Robinson

“Looking into the spirit of others is sometimes like looking into a pond. Though we aim to see what’s deep in the bottom, we are often distracted by our own reflection.”  Katina Ferguson

Re-shaping the Figment Within:  When we defy all of the odds and find someone who loves us in deep and meaningful ways, one thing becomes glaringly obvious.  Things have to change so that this new wonderful gift to us from the universe can fit into our worlds.  The first steps, I’m learning, are to really take an honest look inside of ourselves to see who we really are so that we have the capacity to let someone else into our lives.  This is not an easy concept.  In my recent discovery of this new loving relationship in my life, I am grappling with how to find some sort of loving and sensible way to truly be in partnership.

I believe that we are all highly invested in re-shaping the image we present outwardly to be our most attractive forms possible; however, we often overlook the shape-shifting that happens within us on emotional, spiritual and psychic levels almost hourly.  Wayne Dyer (2002) speaks about this idea that throughout our lifetimes, we are many different versions of ourselves.  The epiphany that I am having is that if my outside version of myself were to change as much as my inside metamorphoses, no one would actually recognize me unless he truly knew my “essence”—my soul.

The Belief about the Sameness of Self:  Sometimes, I grab onto my soul and remind myself that at my deepest centre, I am the same person that I have always been from the time that I was a young girl.  Now that I am forced to pay attention as someone cracks me open to my core, I realize that the transformations happening to me on a daily basis from the inside out are pretty dramatic.  To the outside observer, I am relatively steady, and even-keeled.  I have liked thinking of myself as a static personality.  I have found that society commends me for my consistency of mind, body and spirit because I am then familiar, and predictable by those with whom I come in contact.

The brutal reality is that my sameness is not actually possible, nor reasonable.  By trying to be this way, I am actually fighting the force of nature that is intrinsic to my most basic cellular activity.  My body is always changing as it awakens and metabolizes and realizes its potential.  As I let another person into my life in intimate and powerful ways, I am witness to this idea that “Human beings are millions of things in one day.” (Nick Hornby, 2014).  While opening the door to let this special person into my life, I discover and re-discover who I am over and over again every day.  As my soul breaks open, I have to filter the broad spectrums of ultraviolet light that spill out of it.  I also have to break the sensory waves that hit the shores of my soul with every new and intimate interaction so that they do not engulf me.

Ever-changing Life Force:  What I eat; how I sleep; whether I am living with passion or obligation; how I breath; what I create; how I connect with nature;  what I touch; whom I am surrounded by– all influence my ever-changing life force that is never truly generalizable of the whole me.  I am a product of my past, my present, and the intentions that I hold for the future.  My mother’s voice sings out of me as a daughter.  My son’s memories recall my role as parent.  My work reminds me that I am an educator.   My new relationship asks me to be a lover.  Nature calls on me to be part of its sacred experience.  My body tells me to rest.  My mind tells me to figure things out.  My heart urges me to let go.  My soul rests into the fact that a miracle of self is emerging.  Where my various selves formally enjoyed their separate paradigms, I now need to re-integrate of all of these little bits and pieces of myself into a stronger and purer version of my “whole” self so that I can be in partnership with another.

Stopping to Pay Attention:    Therefore, in order to really appreciate all of it, I must stop and pay attention.  I need to do so in order to see who he is with clearer lenses.  I don’t want to get in my own way of truly understanding another person.  As well, in order to be his mirror (as true relationships tend to afford us this type of honest feedback of each other), I have to wipe my own image clear so that it clearly reflects back to himself what is valuable to him in our connection.

As a result, it becomes imperative for me to just stop.  It is not a gradual and gentle deceleration.  I need to make a lurching and immediate stop.  I can no longer just keep functioning at the speed with which I have been operating on auto-pilot for years.  I can no longer do everything that previously filled up my life with stimulation and activity—busy energy.  In order to stay clear, and to prevent absolute exhaustion and confusion, I have to trim out the extraneous, the redundant, and the minutia of my life.  It is time to purge.  I need to get real and get present.  Instead of attending to the thirty tasks (mostly obligatory) that are normally waiting for me to complete (and likely were an effort to fill up my life), I need to get in touch with what is unfolding in my new connection with another person.  I can no longer simply surf on the face of the waves of a turbulent life.  I need to take a deep breath and dive down deeply below the froth.  By plunging into the depths of my own experience, I hear my own heart.  I allow myself to feel the silence in place of all of the noise that usually distracted me up above.  By doing so, if I listen very carefully, I can hear the pulse of my new partner.  I can also see him clearly.

Down here, I am still.  In these quiet depths, I imagine another way of being on my own and in the space of someone special.  The stuff that is unimportant floats away, and I hold onto the part of me that is intrinsic to all of it.  And then, when I am ready, I swim back upward toward the light and resurface differently.  I hold open my arms and I can breathe.  Time slows down.  It bends just a little.  It creates just enough space for someone to come closer.  I let go.