99. Someone taught me a valuable lesson this week.
About how anyone we meet can be a teacher and mirror things we're unaware of about ourselves.
I’m sad and hurt because I feel like someone has stolen one of the projects I’ve poured my soul into. I logged into Instagram on my phone and saw that someone I know has created their own book club.
A few days before, I’d been seeing online that they were considering how to make it a reality and asking their followers for advice, which I thought was a really cool idea. From organising a book club myself, I know how much fulfilment sharing something you’re so passionate about with other like minded people can bring.
When I clicked on their profile to learn more about what they’d decided to do with the project, I saw that they’d chosen the same book for this month as us, in the book club I organise, and I was drowned in sadness. I felt like I was being robbed. My ego kicked in telling me how bad this was, that I needed to protect everything that’s mine and get ready for battle. It’s happening. Move. Go. My nervous system was telling my mind that we were in trouble. My heart started to accelerate. I felt a fire inside of me start to grow hotter. Everything I looked at on their profile and every thought that crossed my mind was automatically, without a doubt, labelled as “this is terribly bad” because of my ego.
After venting and expressing all of these ego created thoughts, I slowly started to separate from the event and disconnect from the emotions I was feeling. If I’d have stayed in the angry, protective, ego centred emotions, hell could have broken loose. I could have done anything to protect my integrity. I could have kicked them out of the group, insulted them, called them out publicly, boycotted their project, all of which would have put my body into an extreme fight to flight mechanism. But I didn’t because I was able to regulate my emotions.
If all the work I’ve been doing on myself has taught me anything it’s this: to allow the emotions to pass through me freely without judgement or stagnation. To allow them to flow as they come and go, without holding onto any of them. Wait if out, sit with myself and hold myself because I’m safe. I’m not in danger and this too shall pass.
Once those intense angry feelings had passed through me and I’d noticed them, I listened to what they had to say and I understood where they were coming from. This part of me was hurt and also scared that she was being robbed—who wouldn’t get defensive in this state? I was also able to understand that I wasn’t being robbed and nothing of mine was in danger. Everything remained as it was half an hour ago, my ego was the only one telling me that reality was now different. Once the tsunami of anger ceased, I began to tread water to stay afloat. A new sensation came along and I now felt like a strong current that was trying to take me somewhere new, so I let it.
Instead of anger I now felt sadness. I allowed myself to feel sad, to feel let down, to feel upset and I cried to let those feelings to exist inside of me and to then find their way out. Crying always helps me to alleviate the tension and let the feelings be felt. They’re able to exit once I’ve felt them and acknowledged them instead of staying trapped inside my throat.
After the anger and the sadness had passed through me, I felt peace. I felt stillness and I even felt proud of how I’d dealt with it all. Within fifteen minutes I’d been able to feel these uncomfortable and intense emotions without moving from the sofa. All I needed to do was listen to them and understand them, they each had a purpose.
At this moment, I’m sitting in the hammock in the garden. It’s gently swaying in the wind and the sun is shining on the top left part of the screen, it feels hotter than usual. I’m floating in mid air with my laptop writing how I feel and how I’ve navigated this situation. I’m writing from a state of awareness.
All creative people copy others' work. Nobody invents something from zero because it’s impossible. Maybe we aren’t aware in the moment where our inspiration has come from because it’s hidden inside of us from a past moment, like a dormant seed that we saved a while ago. Our personalities are a mix of all of the people we admire and pay attention to. I wasn’t the first and I won’t be the last person to create and organise a book club. But I am the only person that will be able to create “my” book club because there’s no one else like me. My essence, my personality, my energy in connection with all of the other members is what makes our group unique. That can never be stolen or even copied, nobody can copy the energy of a group of people.
The aesthetic, the messages, the books, the format, the days, the schedule can all be copied; but that’s not what gives life to the book club. It’s the people and the energy each person brings forward.
The adult version I’ve been working so hard on was tested today and I think that I can say that I passed the test. I didn’t blend with any of the parts that came up, I didn’t get stuck in any of the emotions and I allowed them all to be present in my body when they felt like they needed to express their concerns. I listened to them all, I understood why they felt that way and then, once I’d taken myself to a state of calm, I was able to take distance and see the event from the outside.
Us creatives will continue to copy others. We find inspiration in nature, in cities, in strangers, in art galleries, in books, in films, in restaurants, on walks, watching YouTube videos, seeing posters in the street, while dreaming… We’re continually absorbing and filtering what we like and don’t. Our minds will never be blank canvases and that’s what being a creative person means: to find what inspires us and find a way to make it our own. When art is stolen and transformed into something so entirely new that the original inspiration can’t be seen at a glance, that’s when you’ve created something meaningful and original.
For now, I’ll take this as a lesson and feel grateful. Life happens without us having to do anything. New experiences come our way whether we expect them to or not, and it’s always our choice what we do with these lessons. Today, I’ve decided to thank the universe for bringing this my way, admiring the event and sending positive energy in all ways possible. Nobody will never be the same, we will never create the exact same thing or experience the exact same thing because we’re not looking at life through the same eyes.
Once I separated the voice inside my head from my soul, I was able to see that this person was not copying me or my project. There were no threats. The book we’re both reading this month is really famous in the Spanish contemporary fiction niche. It was most probably even a coincidence and this person may have even thought “how great, we can both read the same book in different clubs”. The only reason this event turned sour was because of an insecurity I had in my mind. While my ego said “this is bad, they’re copying you”, my soul said “this is so cool, you’re so like minded and can share this fantastic space together” — it's all a question of which voice you’d rather listen to and I choose my soul.
This POMELO is not me having a dig towards that person at all, it’s me showing my own insecurities and showing how everyone in our lives can mirror things we have inside that can be transformed and updated. If this hadn’t happened I wouldn’t have had a mirror to point out something inside of me that wasn’t in sync with the updated-worked-on version of myself. It was almost like a fast track to update more little parts of myself that were hidden away and I decided to do the work there and then. I could have stayed in the ego’s point of view where I’m the victim, or I could go through my uncomfortable emotions and come out the other end with more knowledge and insight about myself.
Life is a question of perspective and the more open your mind is, the deeper you can travel inside of your Self, the more opinions can become interesting, the more people we can connect with and the more lessons we can learn. I’m grateful for this experience and I’m feeling scared about sharing this essay, but also protected knowing that I’ve spoken my truth and I’ve been able to look at myself and realise that with each day that passes, the less power I want my human-ego-voice to have. Soul to soul connection is the solution and you can’t do that through judgement sitting on your high horse.
So this is me getting off my horse, taking my shoes and socks off, standing barefoot on the grass and letting the horse run freely while I stand in an open field alone to figure my own insecurities out. Anyone that passes through your life can be a teacher if you want to learn.
