A Noticable Nobody....and that's a good thing!

http://www.ted.com/talks/thandie_newton_embracing_otherness_embracing_myself.html?source=email#.T9aUkxMSzg3.email

I was very inspired by the actress Thandie Newton's talk on "Embracing the Self", a theme she was asked to discuss at the TED conference. I have attached a link to that lecture. I hope you will watch this video and find out what it means to you and that 'self' you have carried around within you all these years.

I have written before that I was bullied at school for being different. As Thandie says embracing her self required embracing her 'otherness'. That I understand. In order for me to find self acceptance I had accept my own otherness. Yet, it is that 'otherness' which created my shame, because as a result I did not fit in. I was not popular, and therefore not a success in life on those terms.

Yet, we are born with no idea of self. There is not yet a story we are attached to that defines it. We learn what it is from the projections of others. These projections of our self become facts for who we are in society. It is how we learn to navigate life. Those that do fit into that societies norms will be succussful within it, so long as their self remains within that projection. You cannot climb to success or popularity easily if you are of the perceived 'other'. It also takes a unique individual to love and stand by one who is of the 'other' in life. This I do know well personally, but I was blessed to grow up with two parents who were those strong people who could do that.

I did experience a continuous rejection of my self. I came to realize that having that 'self' annihilated daily was in end liberating. I was not  bound by others projections of me, nor did they define me. In a solitary place I was free to be me. My 'otherness' had always been a powerful tool, only that I was not mature enough to recognize it.

Letting go of ones story of 'self' is frightening. I found I could loose my self in art growing up in the face of the rejection of self I experienced in life. I had control of that narrative. I could be me in that narrative. I would draw The Little Mermaid (not the ghastly Disney version, the beautiful Hans Cristian Anderson version), unicorns, and horses endlessly. It was in those intense creative moments that I would loose my self entirely. I was no longer conscious of my separateness. I was whole in the moment of creation. I visited monasteries and nunneries and found that those individuals sacrificed their secular identity to become one with God did not lose their self's, rather those self's became more distinct.

We bombarded by ideas of self in magazines and films. There are a million images of self's we want to inhabit in life in order to project an idea of who we are on others. We create self's to be loved, to make money, to get what we want from life and realize our ambitions. This is a vast industry. What would it be to let go of these projections ?.

I liken it to jumping of a cliff. It is scary, but when you jump you will land. Gravity is liked that. However, the terrain wil be at first unknown then familiar and there will always be challenges ahead regardless of the terrain in which you land

I loved Thandie's expression of recognizing "somebody in nobody" and of being a "noticeable nobody'. I think we are all the latter. And, sometimes we meet a nobody who is a somebody if we are lucky. That person might also be you, if you let go of your self and find out.

Peace.


Footnote: The painting is by Rene Magritte. It is called La Reproduction Interdit ( Not to be Reproduced ), dated 1937