144. I don't want to live in an echo chamber.

I don't need to reach enlightenment and I want to embrace being a messy human.

My boyfriend was making a new compost bin in the garden when he moved a pile of hay to find a nest of tiny mice. He’d disturbed the nest by moving the hay and as a result, the mama mouse ran away so we spent two days worried that these five baby mice were going to die. We checked on them a few times to see if they were okay and if their mama had come back, but the answer was no. They were still all huddled up together alone. We read online that mouse mamas are extremely good mothers and that they usually run off to build a new safer nest, and that’s exactly what happened on the third day.

As I was walking up and down the garden with the lawn mower, a sentence popped into my mind: “No es lo mismo sobrevivir que vivir” which means “surviving isn’t the same (thing) as living.” While it may seem obvious in English because both words appear to be more different, in Spanish it hit me harder because they’re both made up of the same root -vivir but one has the prefix (sobre-) added in front.

I started imagining how the lives of two different people would look if one was viviendo (living) and the other sobreviviendo (surviving). The prefix sobre- can mean that something is going over another thing or that it’s above something, so I imagined one person living life on the ground, submerged in the whirlwind of being alive. And I imagined the person that was surviving, flying above life, not taking part in anything happening down below. For some reason, in the moment this felt like a big thing and I began to ask myself if I was viviendo (living) or sobreviviendo (surviving).

I’ve been going on long runs and have been living for it. I decided that I’d try to do one hard thing a day and I was also craving long runs, so I decided to give it a go. I soon came to realize that I can’t run while listening to music because it pulls me out of my mind and body, and I end up losing my pace and my breathing pattern. I enjoy running in silence because I love not having anything bombarded into my brain through my ears, but it felt right to give podcasts a chance. I listened to an episode by Thoughts May Vary (love it by the way) and one idea stuck with me: Living in an echo chamber.

In this episode they spoke about the problem we have nowadays with needing everyone around us to agree with us and if that doesn’t happen, we end up feeling like they're not our type of people and that we can’t get along. The podcast hosts, Gabriella and Meadowlark, talk about how dangerous and unsustainable it is to live in an echo chamber, where you only hear your own thoughts and opinions reverberate back to you. This is something I agree with. If we accept that everyone’s entitled to constructing their own opinion and if we truly learn to listen without judgement, thinking that we’re right while they’re wrong, waiting for the perfect moment to jump in and tell them why they’re incorrect; we become much more tolerable and empathetic people. You don’t need to change your opinion but you can learn to respect that someone else’s opinion is made up of their own personal experience that’s completely different to yours. No matter what, there will always be a middle ground rooted in love, compassion, understanding, curiosity or empathy. You need to understand, not agree.

I’ve been loving running and have been getting stronger and achieving a faster pace on every run, but I entered my luteal phase and suffered every step of the way on my last run. I wasn’t having a great day in general and I felt like rotting in bed, but I remembered how good being more active has been making me feel so I decided to show up for myself and push through the initial hard feelings to find that runner’s high. Well, I didn’t find it and I hated every second of it. I wanted to give up, walk home and curse the activity for even crossing my mind. But I didn’t, I kept running because even if it didn’t feel great, I told myself I’d do it and I’m trying to keep a promise with myself to create a new neural pathway that’s bright yellow and says “I can do hard things.”

While my luteal self was running through the beautiful countryside lanes, I asked myself if I was viviendo or sobreviviendo, and in that moment I was sure that I was viviendo because I was suffering.

An older version of myself would have deep dived into her therapy-driven brain trying to find the reason for the day’s discomfort, the frustration, the anger, the determination, the sadness, and obsess over going to the root and healing everything I’d managed to dig up along the way. But I’ve almost reached my Saturn Return and I’m a new person (lol) so I opened my Natural Cycles app to see if I was still in my ovulation phase, as I was on the other runs, to find that I wasn’t. I accepted with ease that I’m currently in an inner-autumn phase and left it at that, I didn’t need anything else. In fact, I’ve reached a stage in which I don’t even need my menstrual cycle to justify how I’m feeling. I spent a good few years digging inside of my brain and feelings, asking myself constant questions and practically obsessing over becoming the perfect version that’s not triggered by absolutely anything and has a nervous system made of steel, unshakable and unmovable. But I’ve slowly but surely built a new system of beliefs that’s healthier for me. I used to believe that if I became the best version of myself and if I worked hard enough, I’d reach a state of enlightenment and would become a very spiritual version of myself down here on Earth.

Some people believe that we are a soul in a human body that’s here on Earth to experience unique things throughout our lifetime. Each soul chooses what they want or need to learn during that lifetime and comes down to Earth, which is the dark place made for “suffering” whereas the Source is where we feel whole, powerful, in connection and where true happiness is to be found. When said soul dies, it goes back to the Source until it’s ready to come back down to Earth to experience another lifetime full of new lessons. Enough people have had NDE (Near Death Experiences) for this to not sound completely crazy, but I’ve obviously not been able to fact check it for you.

To some degree, I like the idea of going back to the Source, where bliss and joy is found, rather than thinking that death is a perpetual silence of nothingness. It makes no difference in the end because we’re all going to die, but having one set of beliefs or another may help you somehow, and this idea helps me not fear death. The reason I’m talking about this is because most rookie self-help books mention beliefs similar to this one and the main goal is usually to reach the highest state of awareness and enlightenment you can. The goal is to remember that you have come from the Source and that this so-called life is all a game and not to be taken seriously, and guess what? There’s some truth in that because no matter what, we’re all going to die at some point so when you focus on your life coming to an end, it helps to put things into perspective: Would this be important if I died tomorrow? If this person I’m angry at died tomorrow, would I regret this mindless argument? If I were to die in a few weeks, would I do things differently today?

I read every single self-help book in the book shop. I went hard. I tried my best to become my best version. I paid for the therapy. I journaled my feelings to death. I meditated. I looked at my inner-child wounds. I did everything I could do and I became obsessed with it. Until something clicked and I decided that I already am a really nice person and that trying to become my best self by analysing every single pebble in my rucksack is exhausting. I stopped asking myself the questions I learned in therapy, I stopped overthinking every single thought and feeling, I stopped trying to change absolutely everything and I surrendered to the mess of viviendo (living).

I stopped trying to become a Yogi and I surrendered to being a Human. If I am a soul that chose this life to learn things, why am I trying to control everything around me and turning my life into an echo chamber? If I truly am here to learn these lessons, why wouldn’t I want to get my hands dirty?

As far as I know, Yogis live in a constant state of meditation spending their days on Earth extremely connected to the Source while inhabiting a human’s body. You’re not viviendo (living) if you’re sobreviviendo (surviving), flying above every other human going through it all. But this it’s a catch-22 situation because those Yogis supposedly chose the experience they’re getting here on Earth to learn from too.

I personally stopped aspiring to be the highest, most illuminated version of myself and decided to choose new role models instead of the ones given by self-help and spiritual books. Enlightened people still lose their shit and get caught up in human feelings so why not embrace being human and learn from the people that go through life, as humans, and are still good, generous, loving, happy, healthy and fun people.

Every time I failed my therapy-spiritual-woke self, I felt terrible. I felt like I’d let myself down because I knew better. In hindsight, I could have done things differently and I could have handled the situation better, I had more than enough tools in my rucksack. However every time I act as a surrendered-human, I’m much nicer to myself, I place less expectations on myself, and ironically, I become stronger and more resilient over time. The reason for this is because I’m allowing myself to face more things head on and learning to deal with things that I previously wouldn’t have allowed in my echo chamber.

Nowadays I look at the people in my life that have gone through disgustingly human experiences and have lived through them. I look at the people that have been seriously hurt and have been able to forgive with a loving heart. I look at the people that have failed in achieving their dreams and have built new dreams with the same excitement. I look at the people that know that love is more important than being right, because if the Source doesn’t exist after all, I’ll have an echo chamber to be in when I’m dead.

STUFF I WANT TO SHARE ↓

1. While we’re talking about messy human lives, here is one of my favourite songs about things being messy and that being cute and okay:

2. I’m extremely proud about this one… This messy human wrote a piece for her dream magazine

   WARKITCHEN
   and I’d love for you to read it. It’s about my experience living in Barcelona and moving to the countryside to watch my life unfold and transform forever.

   Countryside Living

3. This piece by

   Amanda!
   blew my mind and also inspired me to write today’s essay. Her piece felt so inspiring and she shared her truth in a glorious way so I felt the power to do the same in today’s POMELO.

   How to be ‘Substack Famous’

4. Esta última en español lo es todo para mí,

   carlota 🦎
   y yo tenemos un podcast y la mente a veces te juega malas pasadas. Este texto de
   Mar Manrique
   es absolutamente increíble y todo el mundo debe de leerlo. Hay hueco for all of us.

   Hot Takes #04: Viva la saturación de podcasts

Por si a caso quieres escuchar nuestro podcast, aquí os dejo el último episodio sobre Vivian Gornick y la amistad ❤️‍🩹