Introducing ‘All those selves’
I, you, she, he, we, they.
I am here in GISC, Gestalt International Study Centre on Cape Cod, with other writers who have read the raw version of my manuscript. They found that
- it revealed a lot about me, it impressed them and they wondered about it
- I was seen as a defiant person that did not respect the reader
- the conceptual part is missing
- I am asking more than they are willing to do
- it is a powerful story
- what I have learned from experience is powerful
- parts were liked, parts were hated, parts were childish, parts were brilliant
- it is like a stream of consciousness
- I am confusing
- it needs more overall organization
- it needs an introduction that invites the reader
- it takes more work to hook the reader
- life is a series of challenges
- it would be a loss to make it only available to Gestalt people
- they don’t know why they should answer my questions
- my search for myself, my vulnerability and courage is powerful
- it has to be made more concise
- it could be a bestseller
The selves may coordinate well with each other
or compete and be alienated. Erving Polster*
The selves are competing in me. The sleepy self wants me to rest and lie down, close my eyes and sleep. My active self wants to go out, walk over the cemetery, take pictures, look at the trees and surroundings and come back here in the centre and write. The self that is eager to learn tells me to sit here in this big chair view on the woods of Cape Cod and on the statue of a Woman and read Polster’s ‘ A Population of Selves’ .
Okay, the outgoing self wins. I have to look at the cemetery, the gravestones, the names, the dates. I want to fantasize the stories, feel the energy, come back here and write without hesitation.
After the cemetery adventure.
The battery of my camera was low. All I could do is look at the stones, the names, the mosses, the colors, the dates, the roles the dead are remembered by: mother, daughter, husband, son, soldier, wife, no fathers out there in the sacred ground, that was honored with a monument on its 100th birthday. Most graves date from the eighteen hundreds. On the monument a tribute to the Pilgrim Fathers. No Dutch names. A lot of Paines. I am most enticed by the off white color of the stones covered with the yellow of the mosses. Beautiful intriguing forms proof that the air is not spoiled here. Water on two sides of this peninsula with holiday traces but not today.
Today it is rather cold and grey, in contrast to the clear light and sun of yesterday.
Thinking all those comments over while lying awake last night I decided that although this is a nonfiction book, I can also use the She form to make myself more clear. Main message I understood from the feedback is that ‘I’ am in the way of what I want to offer. ‘ I’ is attracting the attention that you as a reader can direct better to the words that are written. The intention of the book is not to tell you how important the ‘I’ is, although it is. But then you have to know that there are different ‘I’s’. There is an I that wants to tell you that life is difficult, not only for her but generally speaking. She wants to make you aware of the tendency to believe that we as human beings are not good enough, because we are not perfect. But she thinks that life is meant to be as problematic as it is. And we are not meant to be beings who do things perfectly right away, but ‘I’ s who are in process and who have to learn while we are becoming who we are. That is why I as the writer of this book want to say to you: please stop thinking, that life is difficult because you are not good enough. Stop being afraid of making mistakes. Stop thinking you have to be perfect to be loved. The mere fact that you have to deal with severe challenges life poses you, proof how powerful, lovable and beautiful you are.
A demand life poses to us is: Know Thyself. The question is how we are going to do this? Do we read to recognize ourselves in the other, do we meditate the Zen way on the Koan ‘Who am I?’ or do we prefer therapy and going to workshops?
I as the writer of this book did it all and wrote my experiences, thoughts, discoveries, questions down to better understand what (my) life is about. This brought me to the whish to share what I found with others. Not an easy thing to, because it is impossible to just hand over ‘wisdom’.
That is why I decided to transform what I wrote for me in the first place into words that might have meaning for you. In searching for the good form to do it I think going from I to She’s or even He’s as personification of all the selves that are inhibiting me, I might be able to arouse your curiosity and interest. She and He have many possibilities. She is about the feminine pole in me. She can be just a woman as well as a writer, a little girl, a therapist, a trainer, a teacher, an artist, a rebel, a believer, a seeker, a caretaker, a dog walker, an aunt, a sister. He is about my masculine pole. He is the thinker, the doer, the entrepreneur, the one who takes care of the money, he can also be a trainer, an artist, a teacher, but his’ energy is different from her’s. She has more of the confusing, creative, loving energy and he is the one who has the energy to confront, to set borders, to keep going, to reach the goals.
He and She play all those roles in life, Ervin Polster refers to as ‘ a number of different aspects – selves – that are often so much at odds with one another that they may seem to belong to several different people’.
Still there is an ‘I’ in the story. The ‘I‘ is the I that speaks from within. The ‘I’ you can meet is connected to a bigger whole. The ‘I’ needs She or He in one of her or his roles to give her a voice. She or He will do this if they are able and willing to. In their daily lives they are not always connected with ’I’, although they are learning to take their Inner Voice more seriously.
The invitation to you as a reader is to enter this adventure, not only by reading but also by doing. You will find experiments and questions that are meant to inspire you to get to Know Yourself by writing or drawing or painting to discover your own stories in the roles you are playing. And above all I as the writer hope to offer you a guide to get in touch more easily with your own Inner Voice and your own I.
* A Population of Selves, Ervin Polster (publisher etc. will follow)