Let us begin with an affirmation:
I have the capacity to hold space for multiple states of being in the same body…without any judgement.
Embedded in this affirmation is a recent insight I have come to as protests erupted against the killing of black people, mostly in the United States but also here at home in South Africa. It dawned on me that the unease I was feeling during this time was due to an inability to accept my own complexity and nuance. On the one hand, I was and continue to feel grief, yearning and numbness as I am reminded again that I exist in a world that does not value black lives. On the other, I was and continue to be grateful for time to create, meaningful connection and joyful that I am expanding in my career.
I am not quite sure who told and convinced me that I only ever must feel one thing at any given time. It seems to be something many of us do despite plenty of evidence and lived experience that it is not quite how human beings work. We are literally designed to be able to shift in and out of different states. To feel all sorts of ways at any given time.
I also am not quite sure who told me that it was not possible to just to feel something. I seemed quite intent on both feeling and having an opinion or a judgement about whatever I was feeling. When I was in the state of joy, I critiqued feeling it during such a time as this and when I was in a state of grief, I was upset for letting it overwhelm me into inaction. There is not a perfect or even correct time for having a feeling. However, there is a perfect and even correct time to respond in certain ways to that feeling and herein lies my insight. I have the ability to have different feelings coursing through my body at a given time and I am equally able to allow them to just be.
When I finally asked myself what is and is not in my control I became aware that I was confusing having the feeling with responding to it. My autonomy is with the latter, not the former. And so, I released myself. From the pressure to choose one state and from attempts to find balance. The result? More ease and more room for me to expand.
Post by Lerato Shai
MORERO 