This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.
Dear Sara,
Our next one is of course:
The Biggie!
A call to kick off my new year, and speak to you on my birthday, as I always wanted it to be.
My birthday is going to be introvert’s heaven, with an intimate lunch at a high level place that immediately shifts my mood!
And then our call.
A call which I wanted to prepare with vigor, but the theme of “new year” and “birthday call” had a way of preparing all by itself, and in the end all I need to do is write it down.
In 50 minutes, because my weekend is so packed, and I already had to cancel things because I just couldn’t do all of it.
But I don’t think I need 50 minutes.
Because I have set my eyes on living one year according to my “Essential self”.
If the Social Self is the aspect we all need because we live in a society and to a degree have to conform in order to belong to a bigger community, then the essential self is the part of us that is truly us, and that does not belong to anyone except to itself.
I had an understanding that I spent the past 20 years cultivating the social self, in particular as a yoga teacher, and that now that I am setting up my career(s) again;
All I basically did was take the concept of Social Self, and put a price tag on it.
I have felt so totally not-me the past 20 years, and in particular the last 10, that my real name became synonym for an empty shell that I inhabited.
“I” never belonged.
Maybe my empty shell did.
And the only thing I did differently with my new companies, is understanding that my empty shell was way more interesting as a vehicle for monetization, than as a vehicle of acceptance and belonging.
I’ll go be rich and alone, instead of squeezing myself within the tiny margin you can allow for me to make a living and still be part of society.
Now, I already knew that emotionally separating myself from the person I was going to be four to seven days a week, and that taking time off meant:
Be Lauren Harteveld.
The alterego, that I identified as my real self-
I knew that was probably not the most holistic approach.
That cutting yourself in two, in particular if you view one half as an empty suit you just put on to make money, was not wholesome.
Even when- and I knew this is what happens- “the actual work of the shell” is really, the real self.
My clients and my yoga students, of course they get the real me!!!
So the separation was far less extreme than it was in my head.
But the reason I have a profession that is local or national, is to have a profession that gives you a place, in the society at large.
Being an international online entrepreneur does not make me a relatable person, in the Netherlands.
So the empty-shell profession, the front, was really needed and in that sense the “I” under my real name, was not a real person.
It was a construct, to get around.
And me thinking about “On which days am I “her”? On which days am I real? (Lauren Harteveld)”;
That was me trying to perfect it.
Trying to cut it in half, permanently.
Only to realize Lauren Harteveld does not have a community. She does not have belonging. She has a few friends, for sure, but they are not part of her daily life and her/my lover is currently outside of my energetic circle.
I have no idea when he will come back, and if he does, with what message.
Will the dance begin again?!
I hope so.
But I can’t count on it.
And out of ALL of that, all those thoughts, and me standing with the scalpel in hand to cut the real me out of the empty shell I apparently needed to be to fit in and be relatable;
An anger arose.
And I remember the other times in my life I was this angry, and have a better understanding now of Why!
And Where that anger comes from!
It is anger that is reserved for situations where I am put on the spot to comply, to say I am sorry, in order to belong, and to be accepted or welcomed back in.
Sara, what I felt I can only describe as the biggest, hardest, loudest, fuck you I have ever felt in my whole life.
And I took ALL of that energy back, and of course I am not going to cut myself out of an empty shell persona, and leave my Name and Identity as a monetizable shell.
That is ME you’re talking about!
I took my FULL identity back, the WHOLE person, who I still was late 20th century, before the world got their fangs in me, and I started to believe I was somehow responsible for other people’s feelings.
Late 20th century, when I would NEVER have given up my identity in order to belong!
And yet?
I belonged perfectly.
So instead of the empty shell I am claiming full authority of myself, and as myself.
I will say who I am, and WHY I am.
I will tell people of the game I played with my lover, and how every friendship, and every business relationship, and even every family relationship can be played at that level.
It is the level where you are in control of your emotions, and the one who gets triggered loses a point.
But it is also a game everybody loves to play, and there is never a winner.
In a way you are always playing yourself, and you are playing no one. But the game-aspect does bring you back, it makes you “better” at life.
You grow.
The message, my message, is that if we keep each other stuck in the social blame world, in the everything-can-be-present world, we are NEVER going to play LIFE at the level where we are Major League players, like my lover and me were.
We’re never going to be the two little boys talking in their own language, like I have with my best friend for the past 15 years.
Who is a mature woman too, just like me.
But we play, that we are two little boys.
We’re never going to get lost in Star Wars lore, or in Bon Jovi universe, or in the Rock Star badassery of entrepreneurship and creativity.
We’re never going to pretend-play it’s 1998!
Once we settle for battling, discussing, and concerning REALITY, our life is going to be nothing else but an endless stream of long and unpleasant conversations, and ALL the play is lost!
All the hot sex is lost!
And all the badass 20th century women, will get overwhelmed, dissociate from their bodies and identities, and will stop showing up for life altogether.
No one is going to notice if they are actually there, inside their body anyway.
And THAT is what I saw.
So I am going back, to 1998, like my project here on this website has been about for years.
But this time I know WHY I am on this time-travel project.
Because the 20th century was the time I was still a whole person.
I was still my essential self.
I was not split up into an empty shell and an alterego where my soul lived, as I have been living for the past 15 years.
So the upcoming year, will be my year of wholeness, of living under my real name, but also with the alterego identity, they’re both me.
But they are both ALIVE now.
I have a STORY, under both now.
I have POWER, under both now.
But mostly, and more importantly;
I will be playing, under both now.
I am on the field, the field I was once on with my lover. The Major League.
And what I will be teaching, coaching, mentoring, and yoga-ing;
Is that the field exists, and how to play there!
Among your peers.
In the never-ending game, of life.
.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living
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