On Being "Too Sensitive"
Wading back into the waters of working this week…
It always amazes me how quickly I step into not working mode — I think I will make a very good retired person someday, or maybe not, maybe I won't know who I am or what to do with myself. (This remains to be seen, should I be so lucky.)
I do feel something almost like shy-ness in the returning. At times, I wonder if I'm too sensitive to these change, my experience of which can be so subtle, more of an energy body and internal thing than anything tangible.
I also know that a deeper quality of rest takes place here that I cannot quantify, one that is absolutely necessary for me to continue doing my work in the world well.
Another thing is that I'm deep into the memoir I'm currently reading, and this makes me see perhaps the reason behind my tendency to binge read when I'm taking a break for work. I read in such a way that I become so immersed in a writer's voice and the world of a book that some part of me actually feels like I'm inhabiting a different psychic space, one that isn't easily compatible with the mechanisms of schedules and tasks and calendars and other people.
This is delicious and also hard for me to swim back to the surface to this place where life is happening and needing me to be present. I sometimes think that this is how it would be for me if I were writing full-time, and it's actually a good thing for me to have things — work! — that tether me to the outside world lest I get lost in my own insides.
The moment I say hello to my first client this week, the moment I open that magical space of a new writing group, I will also feel immersed and utterly at home. The shyness will evaporate and I will feel like myself. This, too, has proven true time and again.
Sometimes I think I need to turn down my own antennae a bit, if that makes any sense. I also know that "too sensitive" is an assignation many of us have lived with and absorbed as a negative trait or temperament, and I don't buy that. It just means being patient and gentle to the subtle recalibration required by transitions of all kinds.
This morning, I created an "Appreciation" folder in my gmail, a place to keep notes that remind me that at the beginning and the end of the day, my job is to be a spiritual accompanist, and that I'm already doing/being it. That I don't have a "work" self and a "non-work" self. That I can integrate, with just a small amount of effort and commitment, the pockets and practices of quiet that I find so grounding and necessary, even into my "busy" days.
The first note in the folder is from someone who had just bought me a virtual coffee.
““As always, thanks so much for doing what you do, for being who you are, and for sharing both. Never forget the ripple effect of goodness you’re having in the world, most of which you’ll never know about.”
Most of which you'll never know about. Well if that ain't the truth.
Ego can be a real trip, and if there were an Olympic team for getting tangled up in thought, I'd be on it. Our fears about being enough: ego. Our need to prove that we're good or worthy: ego. This doesn't mean that the need for validation and recognition from others is a bad thing; it's not. It's a human thing. But it can also become its own kind of addiction, so it's useful to stay alert to that bend in the road.
Remembering that what matters most — no matter our work, no matter what role we're in or what task we're doing — is our presence, the sheer gift of who we already are, that is the the real deal. No team, no medals, no competitions. And it's true, we may never know where our presence mattered most.
On that note, may you be yourself today. That's who the world needs more of.