The Space Between What Was Asked and Who I Am

Writing is something that has been a passion of mine for a long time. It's something that I have always done on the side of everything I do. Not for business, or to support it in any way. Just as something I enjoy doing. It has always helped me express myself and organize my thoughts. Sharing them with others was something that never seemed important, because it wasn't for anyone else; it was for me. But like most kids, I went through our school system, and sharing your ideas and writing things for the purpose of other people became part of that. And in Elise fashion, when anything I loved was put into a box, it wasn't something that I handled well. There were many projects from middle school, all throughout high school, and even into university, that I spent writing on a topic I chose and why it was more important and productive than the asinine ones provided. Or some odd rebellions of handing in six blank pages and a seventh one that reads "these blank pages can say more about me than any words I could ever write". And through these assignments and weird rebellions, I have learnt again only one thing. That my writing was never meant for anyone else, but for me. I will always write for me, despite it sometimes "having a purpose for someone else."

But sharing my writing is something that has changed over the years. It has become a way for people to know me. And while it was never my goal, it has been a really neat side effect. While my self-expression was always just that. Self-expression. And self-expression for the sake of self-expression. It has allowed people to see a side of me that was hiding behind the self they created, the box they decided to put me in. They got a window into how I see myself. What a magical experience it is to be able to suspend our own eyes and see through someone else's. It's not an experience I think we need to live in, but one that we need to know how to do.

My eyes have been called many things over the years: "odd, insightful, mind-opening, naïve, enlightened," but the overarching theme is always the same: unique. What a fun word unique is, implying that in some way it's different from the rest, meaning one, one and only. And yet one also implies it’s part of the all, the same. We are all the one and only, and we are all a part of the whole. The Universe.

My perspective has never felt unique to me; it just seems whole, but I imagine that is how everyone feels about their perspective, because it is the whole of their experiences. But maybe the thing about me that is 'unique' is that it never occurred to me that others would want to hear my perspective, see through my eyes, that theirs would be enough. But what I've noticed is that most people don't feel like their eyes are enough, not because they aren't, but because they have been taught to see only part of the picture. Taught from such a young age that their way of looking at things was naïve or foolish. Taught that if they understood better, knew more, they would never see things in such a childish way. If they learned more, they would see the value of a jaded opinion. Understand the protection it serves them in this hostile world.

Still to this day, people try to warn me of the enemies they think I don't see lurking on every corner. The things they have decided, I am so unprepared to handle. The naivety that will, of course, one day be my downfall. But what's funny about it is that it was never the threat, the 'bad guys', or the pain of life that made me see the insanity of seeing things their way. But the safety within myself to let go of that vision. The giant threat of doom was never what told me it was okay to fight for my perspective, but the thought of knowing I was allowed not to, because it was enough that I knew.

We think so much that when we lose our claws, it's because we've been taught that there's nothing worth fighting for, but in fact, it's the opposite. There is so much worth fighting for; we know when and where we are defeated before we begin. It's the idea that there are actually things and places we can make a change and difference in, and places we can't. It's a knowing of when and where those places are.

I saw as a kid so many people fighting so many battles, to no end. Making no ground, the idea of fighting just seemed ridiculous to me. But as I got older, I realized it was never the fight that was the issue; it was the fact that so many of us lost the things worth fighting for. We lost when to fight and when to walk away. When and where is it worth standing in our power. We got all caught up in these definitions we hold ourselves to, these boxes we all put ourselves in; we forgot the beauty in just allowing ourselves to be. Be at the expense of whatever ideas and boxes we have for ourselves.

That being is where the magic happens. It's where my rebellion sparked, in the space between what was asked of me and who I was. It's where my words actually landed. Not the words someone told me to write, but the ones that flowed from a place so deep I couldn't locate it if I tried. It’s a power we can only harness right where we are. The now.