Hello. My Name Is . . .

10.03.2016 by annacolibri // Leave a Comment

I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am. – Thomas Cooley, Symbolic Interactionist

Do you ever get that strange and dislocating feeling that you’re not sure who you are? It often happens when you are traveling to new places, or find yourself unexpectedly alone. It can also happen after a job loss or a break up.

According to the sociological theory of symbolic interactionism, our identities are made up of our internalized perceptions of how other people see us. While that may in fact be what identity is, I’m not sure “identity” itself isn’t all that useful a concept.

Here’s what I’ve been playing around with:

We are not our identities
Identity isn’t as necessary as we think

Identity is an optional tool we use to create order for ourselves and that other people use to create order for themselves. In a best case scenario, we use “owning” an identity to set ourselves free from the effects of (harsh) judgement. One common example is a person who comes out of the closet and “owns” his or her LGBT identity. Yet even in that positive example, we can see the limits. To be identified as LGBT sets a parameter and a definition around whom a given individual is.

Flipping the situation, we find so many examples of identity used to harm. For example, the identity of “woman” earns you an average of $.79 to the dollar. The identity of “black” opens you to racial profiling. And at the end of the day, each person you meet is going to have a different idea of what it is to be a woman or to be black.

Identity, therefore, is inaccurate, unstable, and limiting.

We Are Not Our Identities

I disagree with Thomas Cooley that “we are who we think others think we are.” We do not know who others think we are. We are not in their heads. So, even if we build an identity around it, we are building an identity on the shimmering fruits of our imaginations and therefore identity by nature is actually just a made-up fantasy. We are not shimmering fruits!

I know, it’s alarming to think that our identities are just dreams and fancy. This is the stuff of existential crisis, but hang on: I have a solution.

First, though, a personal anecdote:

When I separated from my ex husband and moved into my own apartment, my identity was shattered. I was no longer the sweet little stay at home mom I thought other people thought I was. Lol. I was nobody. And I wasn’t sure what to do.

I reached out to a wise woman friend of mine, Elizabeth Rutherford, and I asked her advice. She painted a picture of me going through my day, waking up, getting the kids ready, doing laundry, and so on. In other words, I would just put one foot in front of the other and not over think it.

We Don’t Need Identity

I was amazed that it could be so simple. Identity free me would do all the things that I had done back when I had an identity. The take home? We don’t need an identity to take action. We can just do what we need and want to do.

Others will judge us and decide who we are; we cannot control their perceptions. While others are judging us we can be folding the laundry, racing the cars, and singing the songs.

It’s not, do I think they think I am a meditator. It’s: I meditate.

Life is about perception, yes. But it is also, I would say mainly, about action. You are what you do.

The Happiest Place on Earth

09.14.2016 by annacolibri // Leave a Comment

I’ve learned to take my pleasures where I can; in my case, as those who know me know, that often involves Victorian novels in bed. I do not expect to find pleasure or its more evolved offspring, fulfillment, where pleasure is usually found: drunken nights, fancy food at expensive restaurants, and exotic sex are all, I think, overrated.

Up until this weekend I would also have put Disneyland squarely into the overrated category, except that Disneyland, unexpectedly, was for me a spiritual venture.

At Disneyland I felt almost zero anxiety and came away from my time there with the feelings of love and connection I consider the holy grail of human experience. As for anxiety, the absence of it really is one of life’s underrated pleasures. For those who deal with anxiety, I know you know what I’m talking about it. When it lifts, you feel so light you’re almost high.

I visited Disneyland with my son for our annual mother-son weekend. He selected the venue (Had it been up to me, we might have ended up in Scottsdale, AZ, at an all-inclusive resort binge watching whatever . . .).

I didn’t overthink the trip beforehand because I was very busy working. We arrived, and I just let the Disneyland thing take over. If you stay at the resort, you get a “magic hour” each day before the park opens to the rest of the hoi poloi (lol, that’d be us!).

I would have thought Disneyland would be anxiety-provoking, but it’s not — at least once you surrender to the heat, the lines, and the expense. Which I did. Disneyland, at it’s core, is a pretty simple and well-organized place. There’s not much to do except have fun.

We arrived late Friday evening and took some time to schedule out which rides were our priorities for the following day (including Space Mountain, It’s a Small World, The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, and Pirates of the Caribbean) and, because of that lovely magic hour, rode all six plus a couple of bonus rides (Toad’s Wild Ride*) before 10:30 am. Huzzah! Maybe that set the tone, but basically, except for a couple of times when I became hangry (different from anxiety, there’s an easy fix), we just kept having fun.

We walked 20 miles in 21 hours of park time over the span of the less than 36 hours. Impressive, no? And I have the giant blister to prove it!

You may still be wondering how this could have created a spiritual experience for me. Well, it happened like this: On day two, we used our magic hour to ride California Screamin’ about seven times in a row – no lines!

Time three, we both decided to close our eyes. During the initial acceleration, my son reached for my hand and held it all the way through. We sped through time and space downside and up, hair streaming behind us, and that still fairly little hand held mine firmly yet gently and I could feel all the purest love I’ve ever wanted in the span of those three to five minutes. There was no past, there was no future. There was just love and connection. There was just life the way I believe it’s meant to be and not always is.

So I do hope that when the visa bill comes I will remember what’s really important and why I do what I do. Life can be very sweet.

– – – – – – – – – – – –

*When I was a very little girl, I went with my cousins to Disneyland. Not wanting to miss out on my first trip to Disneyland, my parents hopped on an airplane and met me at the park. I remembered how surprised I was when they appeared out of nowhere; that was its own magic.

And speaking of sweet, I remembered Victor, my step-dad’s, joy when we rode Toad’s Wild Ride and how the ride felt so much more bouncy and intense when I was small, tucked between Victor and my mom. At that time, I didn’t know what Wind in the Willows was, or that it would become my favorite children’s book — a shared pleasure between Victor and me.

Disneyland is a sneaky place. It creates memories and tucks them into unexpected places in your heart and mind where they will wait for you to discover them at different times and in different ways. Again: Life can be very sweet.

Don’t Stop Until You’re Proud

09.08.2016 by annacolibri // Leave a Comment

divine lila, anna colibri, writer, digital marketer, san francisco

All exists here, no doubt, for the delight of existence, all is a game or Lila; but a game too carries within itself an object to be accomplished and without the fulfillment of that object would have no completeness of significance.

— Sri Aurobindo

Here’s my advice:

Stay in the game, whatever your game is. There’s other advice about figuring out what your game is, and what causes happiness for you. Many of us struggle with that question for sure and for too long or sometimes forever — never quite settling on a game plan. But this post isn’t about that.

This post is about staying in the game. Because life is indeed a game. You lay out the chess pieces, make your moves and then, one way or another, the game ends. Lights out.

So it really isn’t whether you win or lose; it really is how you play the game. Because at the end of the day we’re all losers. But I don’t think we want to be quitters.

I will admit there is an appropriate time and a place for quitting (I learned this the hard way with my divorce but at least I learned it); this type of quitting is called stopping. Or changing directions. So it’s not really quitting at all.

When, on the other hand, your desires haven’t changed but the going gets rough — don’t quit. Freshen up your lipstick and keep going.

Staying in the game is about throwing drops in the bucket. It doesn’t always feel like much but it does feel like you kept going. Persistence is subtly and quietly powerful. Persistence is power as it was meant to be: peacefully magnificent.

Here’s the thing: Drops in the bucket will add up for as long as you keep adding them. Keep adding drops to the bucket until you and your life overflow.

Don’t stop until you’re proud.