Who Were You Before?

I’ve been doing a lot of yoga and meditation lately. One of the binding themes of both practices is exploring one’s inner world. In guided practices, we are invited to acknowledge our thoughts, our intentions, our anxieties, and gently breathe them away for a short time. Sometimes, we are guided to consider more deeply our desires and how we can manifest them into a fruitful life. And thus, by doing these things throughout my weeks of quarantine and joblessness, I am getting better at them.

Some of my virtual teachers and guides have prompted me to consider that all human beings hold love within. Dedicating a mindful time to be with your thoughts can help in bringing you home to Love; the love that is always there behind the bullshit of your daily life. Having nothing but time on our hands, are we tuning into our Love?

Discovering myself outside of capitalist systems has brought me into my inner space, literally and figuratively. Nearly all of us are doing the same, in some way. I think now is a wonderful opportunity to return to the love we’ve been convinced won’t help us in our “normal” lives. Let’s challenge “normal” together.

As adults, it may be hard for us to remember a time when we didn’t know everything that we know now. In fact, that’s one of the annoying things we encounter as we grow up with our parents and other adult authority figures: their stubbornness and minimizing of our emotions because they don’t remember experiencing them at a younger age. We as young adults are experiencing in real time what it feels like to have to bury our most sensitive emotions in order to make it through our hectic, stressful lives. When we’re all working 40+ hour weeks, there is little time to feel. Any social activity is a form of escape from jobs, bills, responsibility. We are inundated with messages about how to dress, how to speak, how to blend in, how to present or perform society’s acceptable identities for us.

So when our jobs as we have known them are stripped away, along with any opportunity to socialize as we are used to, what parts of us are left?

This is where Love comes in. Who were you before you learned who you were supposed to be? Think really hard. Who could you be if you decided to ignore notions about “normal”? You may be imagining yourself as a child, or simply a blank slate of a human. What do you love unabashedly? Ignore what society tells you about what your race, your gender, your sexuality is supposed to like or look like. What have you been holding back on, because of fears of what others will think of you? What hostilities are you holding onto, that may be holding you back? Who did you learn to degrade for simply being different?

In short, who are you really, when you allow yourself to just be?

Tuning in and turning up the volume on Love will lead you in life toward things that do nothing short of fulfill you. Our society is designed to keep us from realizing our full potential because capitalism can’t run that way. Oppression cannot end if we do not question it in all forms. And maybe, if we lead with our hearts in all things, we can become a stronger, more compassionate people.

Bring your heart forward. Let it guide the way.