I’ve been home almost two weeks now, and fairly well over the jet lag (now I can only blame my tiredness on going to bed too late). I think about my trip with a smile and with a pang.
My cousin and I agreed that the “re-entry” was, as we had predicted, very challenging. Naturally, it’s nice to go on vacation and hard to get back to the grind, but there was more to it. After talking it through, we recognized that our trip had had a quality that shifted our perspectives, and made it hard to unsee the lack of something in our current day-to-day lives.
We experienced a deep sense of agency — the freedom to do things each day that made us feel like ourselves. We each kept a schedule that we preferred (we were both together and apart for parts of most days), and we just felt very aligned with our own energies and preferences. From early morning outings and apple tart for breakfast to art museums and village walks, we could just be who we are and pursue what we loved.
As we re-entered the “ordinary world,” we felt ourselves having to shrivel up, and after ten glorious days of space and freedom, that frankly felt devastating.
Maybe this is why I keep hearing the words from the podcast interview (31:20-34:15) I mentioned: “Be interesting.” Maybe that’s why I keep thinking about how the world opened up for the borrowers when they were seen.
I want this freedom to be who I am in my real life, too. In many ways, it feels hard to access this freedom. There are the realities of needing to work and the constraints that come with a less than ideal work setup, true (and does the ideal work setup exist?) But more deeply, there’s the feeling that my authentic self doesn’t really have a place in my current life. There’s an old fear of being perceived as too much. And of never being understood. (I suddenly remember that years ago a shadchan told me not to talk about books on a date. Hahahahaha).
I need to remember that though these experiences have been rare, there have been guys who did not think I was too much. I need to remember that being too much is perfectly fine. I need to remember the joy and the freedom I felt when I could be my authentic self, and how right that feels.
