Dirty Chai with Chio - Ep 47 - I'm Out With Lanterns, Looking for Myself

The podcast episode discusses the importance of self-discovery in achieving holistic success. The host shares a line from an Emily Dickinson poem that resonates with them, "I'm out with lanterns looking for myself," which represents the journey of uncovering different aspects of one's identity. They emphasize the need to continuously pay attention to personal growth and embrace new experiences to gain a better understanding of oneself. Through personal anecdotes, they highlight the significance of faith, learning from life's challenges, and finding fulfillment in different areas of life. Ultimately, they stress the importance of taking responsibility for one's own self-discovery. Hello, hi, welcome to this week's installment of the Dirty Jack podcast with me, your host The podcast where we focus on holistic, professional and personal success by growing and developing the common denominator to all your successes, all your failures, and everything in between – you. It's about the mindset, the emotional regulation, and the intentional personal development that underpins holistic success. Today's installment is called, I'm Out With Lanterns Looking For Myself. That is a line from an Emily Dickinson poem and it blows my mind every time I hear it. I don't hear it very often, in fact, I don't hear it, I see it once in a while as I am rolling around on the internet or if I scroll through some of the old posts on my blog, I will see, I'm out with lanterns looking for myself. The first time I heard it, it jumped out at me and I thought, what magical words. If you think of old movies or TV shows, think of a person who's gone missing, usually somewhere in a forested area. What you would generally see on the screen would be lights, a lot of lights spread out all over as people walk around or spread out in a line and they walk through and they shout a person's name as they look for them. You know, let's say they were looking for me and they were all carrying these lights and lanterns. They would be shouting, Cheo, Cheo, holding up these lanterns in the dark and all you see is this glow and you feel this intent and this desperation of this group as they work together in these difficult conditions to try and find a lost person. And so when I think of that and all the feelings that it evokes in me, the line, I am out with looking for myself, moves me deeply. And I thought I would talk about it because in the spirit of holistic success, I do not believe that there can be any form of holistic success in this life. If you are not connected with who you are, if you're not connected with your location within yourself, if you do not know who you are or where you are, and that's why it's important to forever be paying attention as pieces of yourself reveal themselves to you as you grow. And as a new piece presents itself, you layer that piece onto the ones that you already know so that your puzzle is a little bit more complete. You get a better understanding of who you are. You don't need to know everything about yourself all at once, otherwise life wouldn't be interesting. It's a game of unveiling each piece as you go along. Sometimes a new piece is ripped out of you. Other times you just pick it up while you're wandering down the street. At other times you find it in a conversation with a friend. At other times you stumble into it because you've had an experience. But the point is to be paying attention so that you can see those pieces when they come. But there are other circumstances in which you have to get out there and go and search for yourself. There are times when you need to go out with lanterns and look for yourself. Emily Dickinson says it like this, I took at a time a memorandum of my several senses and also of my hat and coat and my very best shoes, but it was lost in a melee and I am out with lanterns looking for myself. When I read this piece for the first time, I went and wrote a piece of my own and that piece was I think an expression of a genesis of finding pieces of myself, of being out with lanterns looking for myself and what it meant for me at that time. I was 37 years old when I wrote it. I'm 39 now, I'm 38 turning 39 next year, next month. How exciting. But anyway, so I'm going to tell you what I wrote and when I tell you this, my hope is that you look back at your own journey and you ask yourself about the pieces that you found whether in a mundane moment or in a big moment and ask yourself what they have told you about the person that you are today. And maybe as I share this journey, something will be triggered in you that will help you see a little clearer or that will spark a train of thought because that's what the podcast is all about. So I write in the first person and it goes like this, I want to find myself. My five-year-old self said, why don't you go outside and play, they said, and so I did. I went outside. I played with the five-year-old girl who lived next door. We laughed. We cried. We made believe it was a blistering hot summer. We sat in the flower bed under the eaves making mud pup, discussing the weather. We knew there was no rain coming. The weatherman said so every day at 6 p.m. All the adults said so every time they exchanged hellos. It was dusty and hot. Can't God make it rain? That's how it started, a simple conversation in a flower bed between five-year-olds. I'm sure he can, replied my friend, so why don't we just ask him? Nothing is as simple as seen through the eyes of a five-year-old. We knelt down right there in the dusty flower bed and we prayed for rain. Tomorrow, we said to God, this was urgent. I listened excitedly to the weatherman. There would be no rain, he said. I heard the pitter-patter of rain on the windowpanes before my eyes opened the very next day. It was raining. Even now, at 38 turning 39, I remember it so vividly. I heard the rain and I said, he answered. Those were my first words that morning. I said, Mommy, I prayed for rain yesterday and God made it rain. She looked at me like, oh. I get it now that I'm an adult, but my five-year-old self knew that God and I had had a connection and God and I had answered each other. I had spoken and he had spoken back to me. That began a long life, 35 odd years later, 32 years later, I still, in my hardest moments or in my moments of doubt, turn to asking him directly and I know that he will answer me directly. So, I didn't find myself as a five-year-old in a flower bed many years ago, but I did find an unshakable and very simple faith. I want to find myself, my ten-year-old self said. They taught me to read. I loved it. I read voraciously. Still do. I read everything I laid my hands on. I waited impatiently for my mother's monthly copy of the Reader's Digest. As soon as it arrived, I ran with the envelope in hand to the rotary phone to dial my mother's office. May I open it, please? She said yes, and I did. At the time, she said no, and I had to wait, so I did. My favorite section was the column, Life's Like That, with its spirit captured perfectly in the picture of a bride holding up her wedding dress while she changed a flat tire on her wedding car. The stories were beautiful, sad, funny, memorable. I didn't find myself in the pages of the Reader's Digest. I found an understanding that life's like that. Sometimes you have to change the tire on a car on your wedding day. Life happens like that. I want to find myself, my fifteen-year-old self said. I was too painfully shy to. Instead, I quietly excelled at sports and academics. Quietly. I didn't find myself as a painfully awkward teenager. I did find the ability to hide in plain sight. I use it sometimes, even today, but now I tend to switch it off for longer. I want to find myself, my twenty-year-old self said. I had just been placed on the L.O.B. fast track after doing well in the first year. I tasted alcohol. It was disgusting. I went clubbing and drank water. I was a radio DJ. I tried this. I tried that. The semester ended. For the first time in my life, I was worried that I had failed. I didn't. It still felt like I did, though. My mother looked at my results. She looked at my face. She looked back at the screen. I was ready for her to rain terror on my head. Passing with fifties, she said, very unlike you. And that was it. She didn't say anything else. The next year, I was on the dean's list for academic merit, and I stayed there every year until I graduated. See, I didn't find myself running around, experimenting, trying alcohol, but I found out who I was not. And that has held me in good state all these many years. The issue is not whether I was drinking or not. The issue is not whether, is not what I was experimenting with. The issue is who I was experimenting with being, and understanding that I was not that person, and it was okay. That other people could be that person, and that was okay, too. I want to find myself, my twenty-five-year-old self said. My mother had died. Adulting came for me with a ferocity that left no room to fall apart, none at all. I dated. I dated poorly. I worked. I worked hard. I was broke. It didn't kill me. It hurt like I never knew anything could hurt. But I didn't die. Perhaps it even made me stronger. Rock bottom was a pretty solid foundation. I didn't find myself. I found clichés aren't untrue. When people say things like, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. When people say things like, rock bottom is a pretty solid foundation to build on. When people say, a broken heart doesn't kill you. It's all true. It's just that it's happened so many times it's turned into a story that we all recognize, whether we've experienced it or not, hence the word cliché. But a cliché is not untrue. It is simply one side of a story. I want to find myself, my thirty-year-old self said. It all clicks into place after thirty, they used to say. Some of it did. I found fulfillment in my career. I connected my skills with my purpose. Something there was working just right. I got married. That piece refused to click. Something there was really just wrong. I didn't find myself. I found why I was made. I found that some things can work and others cannot. I found it is possible for one aspect of life to go really well while another burns to the ground. Life's like that. I want to find myself, my thirty-five-year-old self said. By now I knew enough to know that they had no idea where I was. It was up to me. It had always been. But I had asked them, and I had kept asking them. And so they answered as best as they could, and they kept answering. I needed to ask myself. Like Emily Dickinson, I finally took matters into my own hands. I took at the time a memorandum of my several senses and also of my hat and coat and my best shoes. But it was lost in a millie, and I went out with lanterns looking for myself. At thirty-seven, I wrote, I am dead in the woods. I have my little bag of pieces of me I have recovered, revealed and discovered in my search held against my soul. Sometimes I sit down to rest from my search, and I unpack my pieces and let them tell me about the me I have found. I let them whisper about how every part and every turn played a part. Everything I found all these years wasn't me. It was a part of me, God's cosmic puzzle, a piece of myself, hidden in every life experience and quietly added to my bag of self, waiting to be unpacked and known. My journey is to collect the dots, and then connect the dots. I am connecting them, a little at a time, from one now to the next. I am deep in the woods of self. I don't know where I am going. I don't have a map. Sometimes I find massive pieces, other times I try out pieces and they just don't quite fit. It's not exact or perfect. Sometimes the bride has to change a flat tire. In there, I learn what I am not. That's always a corner piece. I embrace the knowledge of others. I embrace the cliches. My only test is intention. Life will do what life does. I must choose who and how I will be, then I must apply it to my purpose. I can't predict what life will do at 40. I do not know, and yet I am not lost. I have never been so sure. It's like I prayed for rain and I know I will hear the pitter-patter before my eyes open tomorrow morning. The weatherman be damned. Yes, it feels just like that. As I approach 40, and this is not a piece that I wrote when I was 37 anymore. Now I'm adding to it as I talk to you about it. As I approach 39 next month, what I wrote at 37 has never been more true. That journey, that walking around, that willingness to hold pieces and not know what the full picture holds, the willingness to engage with myself, with the mess, to sit with it, to be uncomfortable, has freed me from chains I did not know that I carried from my youth. It has freed me from chains I did not know I carried from my adulthood. It has freed me from wounds I didn't know were quietly bleeding because I was so used to the drop, drop of my bone blood in my soul. For the first time in my life, as I am approaching 39, I feel happy and light. I understand what it is like to feel peace. There is a reel that I listened to the other day on Instagram, and this man said, beware the pattern. Beware the danger of the comfort of recognizing a pattern. See, if you grow up with an abusive parent, your pattern is abuse. That is what you recognize. And so when you encounter a person who speaks to you in the way that your abusive parent spoke to you, when you encounter a person who is unkind to you in the way that your parent was unkind to you, that pattern feels like home even though that pattern hurts you. And we often confuse that feeling of feeling like home for love, for rightness. And what I have learned as I approach 39 is you can buck the pattern. You can let it go. You can say no. You can choose a new pattern. It won't be easy. You will blunder through it because you don't know what you're trying to create. You are both the traveler and the mapmaker in those moments, like Brene Brown said. You have to brave trying to create something you've never seen. You have to seek out examples of the thing that you're trying to create, and you have to experience it either through others or by creating it. And then by doing so, you give yourself a new pattern. For a long time, I didn't know that peace was an option. I didn't know that not having some sort of mental anguish was an option. And as I approached 39, I realized that it is mine for the taking, and I have taken it. That I can sit and not worry about a single thing. That I do not need to stay in any place where I feel uncomfortable, I feel pain. That I can excuse myself, provided I'm always kind and respectful, and I do my best to be understanding and to engage. I can always just leave. I can go and find my peace, and I can go and be where I am loved. What an incredible pattern to discover so late in life. I am just grateful I discovered it when I had the opportunity still to then enjoy it. Go out with lanterns. Look for yourself. See, there are many things that we each feel in different ways, and we think, perhaps I'm the only one. Nobody out there knows what I'm going through. Fear. Anxiety. Many people struggle with fear of the unknown, anxiety about the future, specific phobias. These feelings can be overwhelming, and they can impact daily life. You're not alone. Sadness. Depression. Feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and despair can be intense and persistent, and can lead to clinical depression for some individuals. You are not alone in feeling those things. Anger. Frustration. You're not alone. Guilt. Shame. Thinking that perhaps God is punishing you for something. Thinking that perhaps you are undeserving because of something. You're not alone. Loneliness. Isolation. In a room full of people. You're not alone. Grief. Loss. I remember walking down the street in Pretoria on a sunny, gorgeous day. And my mother had died the day before. And even though I was walking with the appearance of calm, in my head I was screaming at the top of my voice. And I remember screaming, why are you all acting normal? Since then, I have met many people who have lost their mothers or their fathers who they were close to. And they've all felt the same. You're not alone. Insecurity and self-doubt. I've achieved my ancestors' wildest dreams. But often I still walk into rooms and feel, one day they'll find out I'm a phony and kick me out. It's called imposter syndrome. I was listening to a guy on YouTube. There are many guys on YouTube these days. But that particular guy said, imposter syndrome is a good thing. You should feel imposter syndrome every 18 months or so. Because if you're not feeling imposter syndrome anymore, you've stopped challenging yourself. You've stopped stepping into spaces where you are in awe of your presence there. And if you're not feeling imposter syndrome, go out and try something hard. And somehow, that made me feel better. Because you know what? I'm not alone. Jealousy. Envy. These emotions are normal. They happen from time to time. Do not let them take you over. They happen. Stress. Overwhelm. It happens. You are not alone. It does not mean that you are not good at adulting. It means you are a human being having a human experience. That is what we are here to do. The important thing to remind yourself, always, is stay alert. To step outside with a lantern and look for yourself when you need to. Remember that when life is being hard, this has been done before. This experience that you are having is unique. Yes. You are having it for the first time. That makes it special and unique. Yes. But always understand, a great way to keep your feet on the ground when great things happen, a great way to keep from falling into despair when bad things happen, is that you are not alone in this experience. You are not alone in this experience. Do not be afraid, then, to step out a little bit more. Do not be afraid, then, when you feel fear, or anxiety, or sadness, or anger, or guilt, or shame, or loneliness, or isolation, or grief, or loss, or insecurity, or self-doubt, or jealousy, or envy, or stress, or overwhelm. Do not feel alone. Do not feel like somehow, somehow, you are unworthy or undeserving. Because you are worthy. You are deserving. You are simply having a human moment. And allow these things to teach you what the next person is going through. Allow this to teach you to connect with the power of empathy, and connecting with the next person on that basis. And you will find that you will find your people. Not everyone in the world is your person. But the people who connect with the same things that you connect with, the people who need the same things that you need, you find those people by embracing the fact that you are a human being and you are experiencing a human time on this planet. And don't be afraid of it. If the fear comes, let it sit with you in the car, to quote Elizabeth Gilbert. Just don't let it drive. I suppose the whole purpose of today's installment is to remind you that you are a human being, and that you can go out with lanterns and you can look for yourself. To remind you that it's about layering on the lessons and the experiences. It's about collecting dots and collecting pieces. You collect your dots and then you connect them so that you can see where the path of life is taking you. You collect pieces so that you can build a picture. If you are like me turning 40, if you are younger, you're turning 30, maybe you are turning 50, look back at the picture you've created and understand that you can add as many more pieces as you would like. And they can look exactly the way you want them to look. And they can be the exact color that you want them to be. It is entirely up to you. It is entirely up to you to pick up that lantern, step outside and go look for yourself. www.circlelineartschool.com