You Change in Conversation With Your Environment
This post isn’t for you — it’s for me
I sense that changes to my inner being occur faster than I’m able to name them. Up until a few years ago, I was able to mentally document the shifts that happened in the last months, or years.
Not anymore. Life feels like it’s speeding up. And while this experience sometimes feels scary, there’s also something liberating about it.
It becomes harder, not easier, to describe who I am. On the way, I realize that who I am isn’t just up to me.
I’m not so much talking about changes in my external world — in my work or group of friends. I’m talking about the changes to my inner sense of self. More and more, I see that this isn’t the causal place for external changes to happen. Rather, the internal and external changes are in constant conversation with each other. They are a feedback loop.
Most recently, I grasped it by going back to Poland. Spending over a week with my family showed me how my environment and company activates ways of being that otherwise are asleep. In the context of family, I experience petty annoyances. The teenage part of me wakes up. It’s a Marta who can’t hold space for anyone rather than herself (if that). It’s someone who I don’t see often while I’m in Edinburgh, where my…
