Investigative Selfism

If you find yourself seeing even the most mundane things as metaphors, this post is for you.

I am a starting a new season of Investigative Selfism with an essay I dedicate to everyone whose hearts might need some compassion these days.

I’ll tell you something about myself that was at the origin of this very project, Investigative Selfism.

It started as a travel blog fourteen years ago but then quickly turned into “Observations on life”, as I’d describe it. Why? It was because my mind would often take me out of the place I was in and to “Oooh, this made me think of this other concept…”

I understood very quickly that simply writing about my travels was boring even to me 💁🏽‍♀️

But so on my recent travels with my family, we all got bitten by some mysterious bugs — only because of the immense privilege we had of getting to see so much beautiful nature in the north of Colombia (hence the photo of this blog post).

There was lots of scratching, especially at night.

“Just one more touch and then I’ll stop. OK, another one, on a different leg now. I’ll stop and just work on my discipline after that.”

And yes, we know there is a concept for a relationship we have with behaviours, substances, or people that are detrimental to us in the long-term. It’s called addiction.

But my post is not about that.

It’s about what that scratching – and the need to very consciously stop – reminded me.

It’s about that need to sometimes just sit in stillness, just sit in that discomfort, because there’s simply no other way.

And it’s also about the honesty that that stillness can bring, above all.

Just some of the recent examples (if you bear with me, I share a more vulnerable example below) for me were realisations of how unbearable this world can be, continuously; how I am not taking my health and energy levels as seriously as I should;
how some pseudo-friendships are not enriching anyone’s lives and should end,
and so on.

I understand not everything gets resolved on its own. Not everything just “goes away” if we become still. But my goodness, how we need that honesty sometimes!

In one of my videos, I ask a simple question: “What ARE you about?” And it is a question I keep on asking myself continuously. But also, even if we get some kind of an answer, the question remains:

How do we operationalise it?

If I claim that I am about X and Y, how does that show? What do I actually do about it?

How am I showing up in this world?

The scratching of the bug bites is yet another metaphor for a check-in.

Where am I just scratching the bug bites, getting that temporary relief that’s not serving me?

Where is it that I am showing up in ways that don’t serve me, and oftentimes the people who I care about?

Where should I just stay still – oftentimes uncomfortably – instead of acting out of compulsion?

Where should I admit to myself that actual and concrete actions are needed, impossible without a major shift in self-image?

The year is ending and I do love a good reflection. But some years, those reflections are needed more than before.

You know that relief, the dropping of the shoulders that happens when something that feels right in the body itself is admitted — even when it’s painful and uncomfortable?

Just like the body knows when something isn’t right, it knows when a truth, a knowing, is expressed. What a basic basic sentence to write; something the Indigenous wisdom has known all along.

Let’s create space for such truths to appear. And then let’s see what’s needed to hold them with compassion.

I’ll leave you with an imperfect example of that below.

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In a very (I’d say, even overly) dramatic moment of my own reflections, a thought came about how the past years have felt witnessing Israel’s daily destruction of Gaza.

The thought scared me a little at first.

“I feel like my soul is dying”.

Wow. That’s a strong sentence.

First, there was an attempt to shame myself for such a thought (“OK, this is way too dramatic”, “It’s not about your suffering”, etc etc.) But then, I allowed it to be. I allowed the sorrow. Yes, I even allowed what I would call a bit of self-pity.

But that thought felt like a relief. It felt like an admission that needed to be expressed, even if the phrase as over-the-top. This is what came when I stopped the scratching of the bug bite. This is what that stillness brought.

I obviously don’t want my soul to die. And I think a lot, if not all, of my political work is to, in a way, selfishly save it.

But when I admit that I am fundamentally not OK, it creates a strange opening.

I am sure that from that opening, beautiful things will flow.

One is this blog entry that might resonate with you ❤️

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Stay strong but keep your heart open ❤️

Justina

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