Hi Friend,
Recently, as part of my celebrations for my birthday (I'm a Leo and I totally believe in celebrating all month long), I got to have a special birthday dinner with some remarkable women.
As the night went on and we told each other more and more stories, one of the women shared a still-tender heartache. Let's just say that she felt really betrayed by someone close to her. Underneath her anger and sadness was a question : "ok, this is what you are doing.... but what about me?" And connected to that: "What about us?"
It's a question that I'm really, really familiar with.
And for a long time, I didn't know how I felt about the question itself... including how important that question was to me.
At its worst, the question, "What about me" has some major problematic side effects.
It can be self-centered and self-serving.
Which most people don't want to be. No matter what your career, or how much money you do or don't have, most people want their life to be about something other than themselves.
Cuz, "Me, me, me" is for sure the worst song ever.
It’s a tune that has caused a LOT of problems. I'm sure you are familiar with some of them!
And then there's the other side: that question, ‘what about me’ is also really important.
It's the "part" in participating. We get to participate in life - we get to have a part in it - and 'what is our part' is one of the key questions we get to keep engaging with.
If you don't engage with your own center of gravity, then you can get lost in the crowd and caught up in an uncritical approach to the status quo. You don't differentiate yourself. You lose the powerful potential of self-realization and with that, of deeper service.
I remember the first time I found myself admitting (with a lot of shame at the time) how important that question was for me to a (then-new) friend, and he turned and looked at me in the eyes and said:
"Yes. Let's talk about that. What about you?"
His response blew me away. I actually retreated a bit - I didn't really know how to respond to that kind light shining directly at me.
Isn't my life supposed to not-be-about-me? I had a strong aversion to the 'put yourself first' narrative. Whether at an individual or a national level, that just seemed full of problems.
So let's just take a moment to validate the importance of the question and the paradox that surrounds it.
Yes. What about you?
Yes: our life is not about us. It's about our relationships. It's about being of service. It's about the art of participating - we are just one tiny node in the vast, vast web.
Yes; we are also the center of a world. (Yes, there are many, many centers!) Each person is her own center. Every baby that is born transforms, and reconfigures the life of their parents and the rest of their family... because every baby - every child, every person - is precious. Your voice, actions, prayers, friendships, advocacy, investments, creative voice, artistic expressions .... they all matter.
And: 'what about me' is deeply connected to the 'what about us'.
So: what about you?
What about the gifts you've been given, and the ways you are re-membering yourself into the wider social/ecological/magical body of this precious world?
How are you engaging with that question?
Not to overly navel-gaze. But to become right-sized. Big sized. Bold sized. Human-sized, perhaps with a dragon spirit who knows how to sing to the other magical beings out there, sized.
Not so big that you are full of sh*t. It's not so big that you take up all the space in the room and keep bringing the attention back to you and your problems.
But the kind of bigness that leads to greater humility..... and to greater strength.
There's this paradoxical space that includes the strengthening, expansion, and creativity of ourselves, this deepening into our own Spiritual truths, this clarity that bolsters and supports and sometimes even answers the 'what about me' question, which can lead us deeper into service, deeper into holding space for others, and deeper into enabling other people to go through portals into their own pathways of healing/transformation/learning/empowerment/agency/reMembering.
At the end of our dinner, one of the women said to me, Sara Jolena, thank you so much for having a birthday, and for being alive, and for giving me the chance to celebrate your life with you.
After a moment of discomfort, I came to appreciate what she was saying. Yes. To be able to invite one another into our celebrations of ourselves is really special. To join in each other's celebrations means we have to open ourselves up for celebrating... ourselves. Not just others. Also us. That means you. And also me. It's a phrase that I will absolutely be sharing with others at their birthday gatherings!
For all of my fellow Leo ♌️s… and really for all of you:
Blessings,
Sara Jolena
Blessings,
Sara Jolena
