Beyond myself, somewhere,I wait for my arrival.- Octavio Paz

I'd like to start this letter with a question: What’s going well in your life right now? I’ll give you a moment to search. If I had asked, what is not going well? Would it be easier to answer? Science research confirms what we know all too well: we have a harder time finding what is good. Our brain is wired to scan for negativity. And, if we look deeper into this notion, we can find underneath our tendency for SELF EVALUATION. We find how, in some ways or others, we are constantly evaluating ourselves. We do it almost imperceptibly. It becomes the inner dialogue. It makes us think of ourselves as a PROJECT for improvement. This dynamic is emphasized by the Capitalist structure we live under, which is somehow frantically sending us the message that there’s something wrong or bad about us, something we need to get, something out there to “fix” us, to change us. Like a nod, we get the confirmation we need for this self evaluation process we experience internally. As if the world is validating what we already know. You see the cycle?

I'm not saying we shouldn't aim to "improve" or "grow" or even that we shouldn't take inventory but the inquiry is : On what basis are we doing so? At what expense? SELF AWARENESS is very different from self evaluation. When we are evaluating how we are doing, we tend to categorize, we tend to live in absolutes. We leave out the nuances, space, questions. The discomfort of failure, of waiting. The discomfort of our social structure that pressure us. I carry this quote from poet Octavio Paz as a reminder of where I am, where do I want to arrive and when and if I arrive there, will I arrive whole? There's nothing more beautiful in this life than to be fully who we are. My invitation is for you to look into the ways you may get stuck evaluating yourself, believing you are a project of improvement and how this might be the very thing that is in the way preventing you from taking up your space, embracing and finding yourself. In between the good and the bad, the wrong and the right, the questions and the answers. The waiting and the arrival.

With love,
Mari