Remembering Ourselves
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Have you ever felt that you had forgotten who you really are, or that you had forgotten the more innocent self you innately knew before you experienced all that life has brought you? If so, you’re far from alone.
Join me this week as we consider ways of bringing that part of us back to the forefront of our lives. It begins with nothing more than a bit of remembering. Stay with me. I think you’ll be glad you did.
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As a way leaning into this week’s consideration, I offer you a poem I wrote more than twenty years ago. I call it, Child’s Play.
After trying for so long
to remember the song
my heart sang in the time
before responsibility,
I heard a child humming,
sitting in the grass,
playing happily alone.
As I listened,
my own music opened up again
and quietly sang itself to me
all afternoon and into the evening.
(Child’s Play, from Uncollected Poems by Scott Lennox)
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Not too long ago, I had a conversation with a counseling client who felt temporarily lost. It made me think of the poem I just shared with you. The conversation began something like this.
Client: “The longer the pandemic goes on, the less I recognize myself.”
Me: “Say more about that.”
Client: “I don’t know how else to say it. It feels like I’m slowly forgetting who I really am. Sometimes, I wonder if I’ll ever get back there.”
Me: “Get back where?”
Client: “Not just to the person I was this time last year, but who I was before the world got hold of me. You know, the me I was when I was little.”
Me: “Do you think that person is still alive in you?”
Client: “I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder. I just know that I miss that part of me. I miss it a lot!”
The rest of the hour and much of the session that followed were spent exploring what it means remember who we essentially are, not in the abstract, but in concrete and practical terms in the here and now. It was a conversation I could directly relate to having been through a time when I had some of the same questions about my own life.
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The poem I shared with you speaks to just that. I remember going through a long period in my life when I wondered if my essential self had been so altered by the multiple traumas I had endured that it no longer existed. I really wondered. One day, as I took a walk through the neighborhood where I was living, I passed a child playing alone and happily humming, preoccupied with a set of brightly colored wooden blocks that were slowly taking on the shape of a small structure.
In that moment, it was obvious that nothing else mattered to the child. There was nothing else imposing itself. There was no one to say, “Don’t do it that way. Do it this way instead.” And the child had not yet been exposed to the harshness of inner judgment and self-doubt. There was only spontaneity and creativity and unbridled joy.
Because I didn’t want to intrude or interrupt, I took in what I could with my peripheral vision and kept walking. As I listened, though, something innocent and pure quietly awakened itself inside me. Though I hadn’t thought about it in years, I caught myself humming a song I knew as a small child when my family lived in the Philippines.
When I realized what was happening, I laughed out loud.
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photo: Scott Lennox
It’s a fact that the same force that created the stars and set them into motion is vibrantly moving through every cell, every molecule, every particle in our bodies, down to energetic levels so discrete that they cannot be named. Because of that, it’s quite natural for us to be able to stop and remember who and what we authentically and dynamically are. Something in us just knows.
I’m not going out on a limb when I say that what is most essential in us is quite inextinguishable.
When we stop and open ourselves to the possibility of remembering who we really are and all that comes with it—when we allow ourselves to become consciously aware of the true nature of our Being—a number of changes take place organically.
One of the first of them is that we return to treating ourselves and those around us with grace and kindness. We aren’t so quick to anger or judgment or negation. Instead, we behave in ways that are naturally resonant and balanced with us.
I’ve read that the artist Michelangelo said that he could see the form within the block of marble before he began working with it. Releasing the inner form was a matter of carving away everything was not true to that form. We don’t need to have Michelangelo’s vision to see what’s below the surface within ourselves. As we choose to become intentional about it, we can begin to see—to remember—what lies within what we appear to be on the surface.
But how to get there?
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The first step is to choose to turn our attention away from what outside sources are telling us. That requires spending the time it takes to really listen, and to hear what is innate in us. Our internal wise and compassionate awareness is always available to remind us when we stop and listen. And though we can get “out of tune” with ourselves through our busyness and countless distractions, we cannot possibly be separated from what we are.
The second part is to accept the truth of what our innate awareness is telling us and to begin to own it and live from that place. You’ll know it by its resonance. Stronger than the doubt or fears you’ve experienced, it will whisper to you, “Yes.” and “Yes.” and “Yes!”
You won’t need a hammer and chisel to get to it. In fact, you won’t have to do any carving at all. You only have to listen to yourself long enough to hear the truth.
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That brings us to this week’s three Beautiful Questions, which are designed to help you be successful in remembering yourself.
Question One: When was the last time you stopped to pay attention to the most innocent and authentic part of yourself?
Question Two: Whether you’ve listened to it in the past or are hearing it now, what does that beautiful and amazing part of you reveal to you?
Question Three: What will happen when you spend a bit of time each day living from that vibrant and inextinguishable part of yourself?
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Considerations like this one can change the ways in which we live our lives. As always, I look forward to hearing what you discover. Write and tell me about them.
As I say each week,
My Light with Your Light
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I’m Scott Lennox, and this has been The Beautiful Question.
The Beautiful Question is a One Light production, written, produced and engineered by Scott Lennox at HeartRock Studios in Fort Worth, Texas, as a way of paying forward to life, being fully present, becoming better engaged with things that truly matter in a complex world, and committing to a healthier future for all of us.