Doubling Down on Madness.
So I was prepared to lie. Well, not lie exactly…. Just become a different version of myself for a few minutes. Probably more like the person most people think I am (and would like to be), rather than the person I feel like I am normally.
The only noticeable difference is that one sounds American (me) while the other (also me, but the person I’d like to be) sounds rather more English.
But the differences below the surface are much more profound.
My wife Holly and I were in our favorite place in the whole world again, up in the mountains. There’s a place we like to stay, and a small city we like to visit. I needed to get away to work on a project, and we also wanted to find some mental peace and quiet.
We also went to look at a house. A dream house. If you remember the one I wrote about several months ago, well let’s just say that this dream house is so much more expensive than the other dream house.
Like a moderate-sized aircraft-type expensive dream house.
Why would I go to look at something I have no visible pathway to owngin? Because if I can’t dream, I’ll stay stuck where I am, and I can’t live with that. So I try to load as many things as I can onto the dream/desire side of the equation, and hopefully the attraction will be enough to compel me to push past my many fears and manifest what I really want in life.
These type of mental games can drive you crazy, and I felt like I was doubling down on madness looking at a house that is insanely beyond our reach right now.
But we went to look anyway, and it was all I hoped it would be.
The house is at the end of a long, narrow and quiet road that ends in a huge lake. There are very few homes on this road, and I’m guessing they get very little traffic. As we drove in, parked and got out of the car to look at this dream location, a man started walking up the road like he wanted to talk to us.
Given our older SUV, I think it was pretty obvious we were not viable buyers, and I expected to get asked to leave. I felt kind of embarrassed to be caught somewhere I really had no legitimate reason to be (that British sense of decorum and manners is really strong), and I was prepared to be talked down to and admonished.
So to avoid those feeling and meet his challenge, I decided to become the other me (well, one of them, but more on that another time), the sophisticated Englishman. Americans will let you get away with just about anything if you are British :)
For me to change accents takes a single thought, especially to go back to an English accent. But the strange thing today was that standing outside that house, ready to defend my presence with a very polished, forthright, sophisticated and very British demeanor, I actually felt for a moment like I was the person who could afford it, who belonged there.
Calm, determined, focused and present. Ready to deal with anything this man had to throw at me with a polite, but very resolute attitude. It's certainly not the person I usually feel like I am
And for one moment, I experienced what being like that really felt like, and it was surprising.
I felt like I was a person who could afford that house, be that successful, that determined, that reliable, that powerful. I’d never experienced that definition of myself until today, and it kind of shocked me.
Coming from a pretty dysfunctional and economically challenged family, I struggle with a self-definition that makes believing in myself significantly harder than it should be.
But for a few seconds today, I felt like I really was more than the image of myself that I carry in my soul, and I liked it.
The funny thing is, the guy walking towards us went onto a pathway on the other side of the road, and wasn’t coming to speak to us at all. All my mental preparations were unnecessary. I was still English for a few minutes, because Holly likes hearing it, but soon enough I was back to just being the American version of me.
But it made me really ponder the soul-image I hold of myself right now, and how I might change that along the way.
Because if changing myself is as easy as a thought, and an accent, then maybe my soul-image really isn’t something that can hold me back at all.
Maybe I can just be the better version of me, and see what happens when I do.
And it got me to thinking… what image do you hold of yourself?
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings