When you get the knack of humility, (and I’m talking really feel the essence of the word) the freedom that shoots forth from it comes from So. Many. Different. Directions.
This piece is about just one of them.
Because, wow, do we perform.
We perform intelligence.
We perform having it together.
We perform spirituality.
We perform uniqueness while also trying desperately to fit in somehow.
We perform stoicism.
We perform “healed.”
Like:
“No no, this is just who I am.”
~This is what I’ve been catching lately in real time~
Every time I get emotional, there are actually two things happening.
First, there’s the actual emotion.
Then immediately after comes this whole avalanche of meaning ABOUT the emotion.
What does this say about me?
Why am I reacting like this?
A spiritually evolved person probably wouldn’t be crying over this.
Maybe I’m still not healed enough.
Maybe I’ve been doing all of this wrong.
And, let’s be honest, it’s the second part where 95% of the suffering lives.
Not in the tears themselves.
The tears usually pass pretty fast when I let them.
It’s the shame.
The resistance.
The “oh my God not THIS again.”
The panic that maybe I’m not becoming the person I thought I was supposed to become.
Calm.
Unbothered.
Stoic but warm.
Above all this.
And maybe some people really are like that naturally.
But then it dawned on me.
The nightmare, really.
The worst thing.
What if I’m just an emotional person?
Like actually. Just part of my temperament.
And then… here’s where the miracle happened…
Would that really be the worst thing in the world?
I mean honestly… people who cry at beautiful music or sunsets or reunions or births are usually the people everyone secretly finds kind of beautiful to be around.
Open.
Reachable somehow.
And I realized that most of my pain wasn’t coming from being emotional.
It was coming from trying to force myself into an identity that made me feel safe.
The Stoic.
The Rational One.
The Spiritually Advanced One.
The One Who Has Transcended Such Things. (I wouldn’t really really think this… but, let’s be honest, I kinda did.)
Because if I am spirit ~ and not just ego endlessly trying to manage itself ~ then maybe I don’t actually need to defend some perfected image of myself all the time.
When that happened…
The ability to accept the tears when they arose, for the sheer reason that they arose (without any judgment), the tears changed.
They just stopped turning into war against myself.
Which honestly makes children make way more sense now.
Kids cry hard and then five minutes later they’re examining a leaf like life is incredible again.
Humility is just this quiet little perception shift… where you stop needing to be the Main Character of your own self-improvement project all the time.
It’s the moment you realize you don’t have to earn worthiness through becoming less human.
Perhaps I’ll never become untouchable.
The perfect serenity amidst all the calamities.
Buuuutttt…
Humility means being real.
If the tears are flowing and I’m not ashamed of them anymore, they pass right through.
Today I embrace that.
It requires dropping the pretenses of who I think I am.
Or at least noticing them.
I relax.
Like my nervous system is slowly realizing:
“Oh.
I don’t actually have to perform existence this hard.”
And wouldn’t you know it…
clarity returns.
Amy Dinaburg, Philosopher, Retired ER RN
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