...a paragraph from 'my book' in the making
Who or What are you? was the question I was trying to answer during the the 2nd ‘Art of Living’ seminar a few years ago. The page in front of me was blank, and so was my mind. I started to write down my name, my nationality, my job title, then I looked further – What else was I? a friend, a partner, a female, a human being, a spiritual being…… I stopped again. What am I?
I lifted my head and looked around the room. Twenty or so course participants were sitting spread around the wooden floor, on colorful, soft cushions, contemplating the same question. All on the journey to connecting to their inner self, to better understand their purpose, to finding a new meaning in daily life. I gave up, I had no clue what or who I was beyond the obvious based on social conditioning. The teacher asked us to share and to my relief my fellow searchers seemed to have no idea of who they were either, and the best answer each of us could come up with at the end was “I don’t know”.
The teacher was thrilled. That was it; we were spot on.
It had only been 5 years since I chucked it all in and since I had started my journey to better understand myself, other people and the world on the whole. It had been quite a struggle to finally reach that point where I was ready to leave my profession of 23 years and my relationship of 10 years and start again from scratch. But once the decision was made there was suddenly a feeling of excitement; just like at the age of 20, when I had decided to move to London for my first job placement.
The whole world was my oyster and I was able to do or be anything. I belonged to the pre MBA aera and had started my training in Hotel Management at the age of 18 in Switzerland. I had been working ever since and never looked back. Life had been fun; Luxury hotels, traveling, living in different countries and speaking different languages. I had never been ambitious in the traditional sense, but enjoyed being good at what I did. Hence promotions had kind of just happened and by the age of 26 I was in a senior management position in a 5 star central London hotel, living and working close to Hyde Park. Live was good; or so it seemed.
Now 20 years later I was sitting on the wooden floor of a Yoga center contemplating who I was and realizing for the first time that saying ‘I don’t know’ was actually ok. What a relief. I repeated it again and again “I don’t know, I don’t know” and with each repetition the weight of a life time fell off my shoulders. My whole body relaxed and I wanted to shout it out loud:
“I DON’T KNOW!!”.
And now years later saying 'I don't know' still works it's magic. It makes me smile, it makes me laugh and wonder what I will come up with next.
