Restrictive reach
“All creative activities is, to some extent, done partly with the intention to rectify or fix yourself. In other words, by relativizing yourself, by adapting your soul to a form that's different from what it is now, you can resolve - or sublimate - the contradictions, rifts, and distortions that inevitably crop up in the process of being alive. And if things go well, this effect can be shared with readers.”
Haruki Murakami
End summer last year, I was enjoying an evening full of warm connection with two of our closest friends. Looking out over North Italian mountains, a question bubbled up. When the feeling of life’s potential and depth naturally expands by imagining what lies behind mountain tops, the mind effortlessly eases into an affinity with mystery.
“What kind of narrative has been most vital in your understanding of life, up till now?”
We had an interesting exchange. Even in everyone’s brief answers I saw their personalities, upbringing, hardships, their study, interests and encounters with others deep thinkers and feelers reflected. Meta thinking our way through the answers, we saw both the degrees of freedom certain logic brought and the accompanying constraints in everybody’s conditionings.
When it was my turn I laughed at the question. It is a habit of mine. Thinking up intriguing questions, posing them eagerly and then struggling to, even resisting, to give an answer myself. A bit of self-irony goes a long way.
Eventually, my answer was something in the line of: “Expansion is continuous.” Tight in with physics and intertwined with a felt sense of life. My co-thinkers intelligently responded that there are more laws of nature, ha! And for someone specialized in the theory of positive disintegration, my answer was also quite funny….
I tried to think my way out of the potential inconsistencies and mentioned that expansion also means disintegration, to me. In any case I noticed how the image of an ever-expanding universe had taken hold on my imagination. The impression that this universe has nowhere particular to go but is reaching out anyhow, soothes existential fears. Maybe I am seeking freedom from something…
My answer also says something about my challenges in finding my ‘place’, if you will. Spaciousness has not been a problem, far-reaching imagination neither. But I have struggled with understanding which conditions do me any good. I have had trouble with having a clear self-understanding, puzzled by paradoxes such as being a very socially engaged and open person, but also very private with a strong preference to work alone and according to my own ideas, schedule, and needs. Working in a group is quite taxing, emotionally, and intellectually. I find it challenging to find my position in a group, tend to either be very present and lively or disoriented and preferably invisible, observing from the margins.
Giftedness as a perspective provided understanding of several paradoxes. In particular the emotional intensity and sensitivity, the deep questioning and social experience of being different. But the gifted lens promoted in literature was often not precise enough, somehow. As if it only expanded my understanding but didn’t focus it enough to extract practices out if that would help me make clear decisions and promote self-care. Understanding my life’s experiences was very vital, but not every struggle or characteristic I noticed is explained by the impact of intense situations or trauma. Not everything has to be healed. I kept missing a piece of the personal puzzle.
I found out that it was crucial to ‘just’ accept certain tendencies. Tendencies which I had often understood as a result of trauma, or something that was just inherently strange or even wrong. At an early age, I decided I wouldn’t show anyone “this part” – giftedness came in hand here, masking the challenges. That part is not so much about expansion. One could say it frequently has the opposite tendency. It wants to contract. It wants predictability, clarity of values, rules, and appointments, not so many social encounters, and a lot of alone time, not solely after an expanse of stimuli, but as a given way of organizing my life(‘s energy). This part cannot really relax when communication contains practical uncertainties, when my schedule is impacted spontaneously and I can’t find a way to optimize the structure of the day anyhow, when people are being unpolite and unconscious about it. It finds the intensity of summer sunlight too much, numbers or phrases or things to do keep repeating in this part of the mind, hyperfocus is a way for this part to relax, it feels emotions intensely yet approaches them very abstractly. It tends to self soothe by repeating certain behavior. This part has been called controlling, bossy, distant, vague, overly sensitive, rude, babbly, threateningly verbal, shy. It is the part that needs my softest attention, because it is the same part that tends to be hard towards myself – some of its focused energy has been submersed in rigid self-rejection after being overwhelmed by a lack of guidance, loss, and separation. Chaos is often nearby, according to this part, and reordering is its outwardly, fluid flexibility. It is at times painfully honest, conscientious, punctual, and easily overwhelmed in crowded situations. It often didn’t understand why people are the way they are, tremendously contradictious – and because of this, it has enabled me to thoroughly study people and their psychology. Through keen observations, it detects, if you will, very subtle changes in facial expression or posture, details that allow me to organize a deeper understanding of what is happening in the emotional undercurrent of connections.
It is the part that offers me the enabling constraints. Its ‘restrictive’ wiring comes with creativity, juvenile enthusiasm, long lasting loyalty, and easy generosity – one could say it is also quite gifted . It pierces through complexity by hyper focusing on the basic rules and remarkable exceptions reflected by unnoticeable details.
It is especially important to accept that “this part” needs help, if you will. I can’t overlook its twice-exceptional needs by focusing on my gifted, expansionary capacity. However intense I am meta thinking my way into life, this part systemizes all the jumpy associations – denying it has the vibrant need to do so, is undermining a lively fragility of being me.
Life is expanding – and contracting. Commitment to restrictions, to hidden parts of who I am, is one of the most liberating acts in this journey of self-development. In some way, ironically, it arrests the developmental focus and eases into what is, inviting me to be authentic, the freedom to be whatever creatively pops up in interaction with contraction. Always fixing, so that I have nothing to fix.