The many choices we make, with or without knowing we are making such choices, craft our path and our identity in drastic ways. We strive to be who we want to be, who we aspire to be, who we believe we can be or should be, and we make choices in accordance with these images, these projections of potential. Which means that we discard the other paths, the other images, the other projections of potential. We determine what we are, and what we are not.
This dynamic is ever so strong during the teenage years and early adulthood, the heroic phase of conscious growth: our conscious ego wants to show the world who we are, expecting the world to resonate with who we are. And if the world does not resonate, then we expect to change the world’s mind about it all, and be seen, be valued, be appreciated, be understood. The energy of the heroic phase is fearless, uncompromising, determined, self-evident. It is a precious time when we dare push through hurdles, when we find ways to make things work despite real challenges, when we dream big and live as fully as we can. We have time, but we live fast, we create and carve and push some more, one foot in the here-and-now and one foot in the future, in what we are anticipating to be based on all we are building now – self-assured, if a little unsettled.
Then, life becomes busier, with more established ties and connections and relationships, and we become more unsettled. We learn to slow down, or we are forced to slow down, because the heroic energy reaches its peak and begins its downward travel. We learn to engage with our big dreams differently, because the dreams become somehow more static, more distant – yet they hold so much potency still, and we hold onto them, secretly, sometimes desperately. Maybe it is our ability to live life as fully as before that has changed, and we cannot keep up with the same attitude. We dream still, but we are no longer sure what to do with these dreams, where they fit in our life as it is. We look at our life and we (hopefully) appreciate the here-and-now, but the foot that we previously had firmly into the future is now wobbly, and the wobble is disconcerting. Off balance, clumsy, uncertain. We reflect on the path to date, and we start realizing that we made more choices than maybe we knew at the time, choices that bring us to the present wobble.
The wobble is the reckoning of all that we are not. In the process of crafting the identity – complex and multi-layered as it can be – that we hold as our present self, we put aside possibilities of being that we then do not pursue, because they seem fickle, uninteresting, unreachable, unfulfilling, not exciting, too challenging, too time-consuming in light of all of the other commitments and invitations we have. We prioritize, we choose, partly informed by an inner soulfulness, but also partly guided by our external circumstances – other people’s projections onto us, societal expectations, our own childhood wounds. Some choices are lucky and fulfilling, others leave us feeling hungry, disappointed, longing for something else, yet unsure we are allowed to even long for more.
To face all that we are not is not always a pleasant process, yet it is one we ought to engage with if we are to take our Psyche seriously. Those longings, this hunger, the regrets, the fantasies of what we could have been speak of who we are too: they pinpoint the complexes that mar our conscious sense of self and blur our capacity to enact new steps, the struggles with acquiring the conscious humility that paves the way to wisdom, as well as the cues that there is a vast life unlived that may not turn out as we fantasize it but will be what our soul desires it to be. To face all that we are not entails entering the playground of “what ifs”, but it encompasses so much more than that. It demands we take our soul’s agenda seriously, that we work consciously, patiently, with dedication, towards honouring the process of becoming a mere drop of consciousness in a vast universe, and of needing to be that mere drop, unique in its own way, special even if seemingly unremarkable, meaningful even if so small and so easy to overlook.
In the acceptance of being a mere drop of consciousness, we find the respite and the freedom we need to reconnect with the big dreams and make them a reality within our world, small yet meaningful, unremarkable yet profoundly unique. We realize we do not have to choose so drastically an identity, and we do not have to justify ourselves so constantly, because we can just live what we choose to live, and be what we choose to be, and metamorphose whenever we choose to metamorphose. We may never reach the heroic heights we entertained in our younger years, but we can craft a life that reflects all of what we are and most of what we are not – creatively instilling sprinkles of a quietly daring, curious, welcoming attitude open to the imaginal and to the rich mysteries of a life humbly and fully lived.