"Temple of Language"

1O.2O.2O23

Attempts to worship
In the temple of language
Fleeting eminence 

EJS

I've recently come to a conflict of identity. Caught up in titles- those I assign to myself, those I have invited into projection, and those I seek to avoid. All of it manifesting in a paralysis of action. 

I can’t do this because i'm not that. I wish I could do x, but because I have not earned y, no one could possibly respect my attempt at z. Living in my mind. Trapped in a prison of my fear-based ideology. 

Sincerely, I want to change this, and I even believe on some level that I can, but holding that thought in mind does not permit the transcendent change actually occurring.

I feel overwhelmed by the desire to receive permission. I catch myself trying to seek out esoteric explanations for my non-startism: Perhaps it’s my generator need to respond, or it’s my virgo perfectionism, maybe it’s because of my conventional ENTJ-A approach to life… There is temporary salve in these definitions and approximations- my ego feels validated- but they offer me no solution to the arresting immobility. 

The title I find myself in the greatest wrestle with has been writer. When will I have done enough to feel valid in the proclamation? I suppose we can validly claim anything if we do it? But how often must something be done for us to assert it as a title we deserve. I cannot seem to identify that threshold. Surely, the best way to confirm oneself as anything is to perform the behaviors associated with the identity, yet I find myself halted- transfixed by the belief that somehow the title precedes the behavior. I realize it doesn’t necessarily make sense, but I want to offer myself some credit that my attachment to this order of operations is not something I just made up. In many arenas, individuals must practice at something before they earn a title- doctor, coach, accountant… But what about those of us who pursue professions that can be reduced to hobbies?

I thought I would transmute this limiting belief when I finally achieved the accomplishment of being paid for writing. So capitalistic of me. But, if that affirmation was not the lynchpin of my superfluous belief, why am I so attached to this ideology of earning the title of writer? I guess that is the funny thing about beliefs- they aren’t necessarily rooted in anything. Some things we believe are validated by the continuation of the belief itself. Until we attempt to confront the belief itself- inspect its origin, pathos, and dogma, it can subliminally run our lives with no rational reason or intention of slowing down.

So, am I a writer?? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Although I feel no closer to overcoming or abandoning the hidden belief that roots my ideology and the identity conflict it feeds, I am at least confronting that it exists and I sowing the intention to interrogate it in time.

No closer to an answer, the percolation of more questions reminds me of something a former mentor once told me, “To get to any good answer, you need to ask why at least 5 times.”

-Elizabeth