The Best Gift You Can Give Yourself as a Creator

The hardest part of growing up was learning the right things. The hardest part of growth is to unlearn the wrong things. The catalyst is in the action. The inhibitor is the inaction. These are the states I find myself confronting, and always, oddly, at the very time I yearn most for comfort. As I pass the halfway point of life’s hallway, I still hold on to the belief that comfort is a smoke and the fire of discontent is near. It’s a limiting belief. It’s a learned behaviour, and the best way to unlearn it is to get over myself.

In a nutshell, becoming who I hope to grow into requires unlearning the horrid version I was told I was growing up. To make space for learning and unlearning, I had to commit to getting over myself. Because I am not the image I see myself as; I’m not the image I was told to uphold. I needed to restart the operating system. What got me here won’t get me to where I want to be. There seems to be a meditation to it that I couldn’t put into words, but let’s try. That’s what this journal is for.

I needed to restart the operating system. What got me here won’t get me to where I want to be.

“I’m neither my parent’s violence nor am I my other parent’s silence. I’m neither the apathy that cages me nor the empathy that I seek. It seems that the way to be something is first to be nothing. To disavow this corrupted lens of seeing, I have to close my eyes and listen to the birds singing. I don’t judge their songs because I don’t need to—unlike how I silence my own voice because I was taught it was important to do. Getting over myself feels like peeling the skin off my body, but I gotta get it done before I become the thing I never wanted to be.”

To get over myself, I must first know what I’m getting over: The imposed image of self-worth; my identity tied to the value of my work; the need to fill the crater of what was unfulfilled; the programs and mechanisms I’ve unknowingly adopted to drive creativity (but were actually hindering the real growth that awaits me). Meditate on them long enough, and they will turn to dust—debris from hubris, smoke from the fire.

Meditate on them long enough, and they will turn to dust—debris from hubris, smoke from the fire.

The things that I’m trying to get over are still pillars of my being. As you get older, society assumes you’ll get wiser, too. I don’t think this is a universal truth. It takes a lot of quiet to distil the noise, and it’s very easy to accept the noise as the truth. It’s scary for anyone to metaphorically turn their eyeballs outside in and observe their coding. My operating system has served me well, but it has also limited me to the edges of what is possible—bugs and all. This can’t be it. This isn’t all that I can be. In this tireless pursuit of potential, my need to reset became an odyssey beyond the rest.

I implore you to take a journey within. It can sound spiritual and otherworldly, but I don’t subscribe to those things. I think if everyone gets a chance (and gathers the courage) to look within, they will discover the very things that they project onto their world. If you know this—what makes you uniquely you—then you can identify what needs learning and what requires unlearning. I see getting over myself not only as a chance to broaden my creativity or embark on an adventure in self-discovery, but also as an opportunity to be open to what the world wasn’t prepared to show me. I might not be fully over myself to see it. But hey, one learning and unlearning at a time.