REGENERATING ME FIRST

My past self was conscious but incompetent with being regenerative; I didn’t know how to nor where to implement it. Also, I would not have appreciated this beautiful poster the way I comprehend and embody it today. My present self is now conscious and competent with being regenerative, through training and education, but I’m still struggling to implement it. My first step is regenerating (with) the areas of where the most of me is mirrored, and that’s my family and partner.

Resolve = time, patience, and connecting more with people who are currently practicing and implementing it.

WELCOMING MY WEIRD

Many don’t know that I attended an alternative junior high school when I was young. During this heavily influential (puberty) growth phase of my life, my identity, thinking, and physiology were being bombarded with change and influence. Many of my vivid childhood memories (traumas and triumphs) have come from these years. I didn’t know this, but my school, called Quest, used the Waldorf method. This is where the learning process is essentially threefold, engaging head, heart, and hands—or thinking, feeling, and doing. It uniquely integrates academics, arts, and practical skills. It was founded and run by incredible humans (true hippies) that I am now only truly appreciating. They say the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, well in this case, it’s all circling back, and I’m now just starting to embrace the strange, quirky, weird, black sheep brilliance within.

Resolve = own your experiences, welcome the weird, because “it’s weird not to be weird” - John Lennon

CHANGING MY WAYS

I saw this pinned on a bulletin board in a cafe in Puerto Viejo and stood there, taking it in, for a solid 10 minutes. I was trying so hard to break out of a shell, rip out of the old skin, and be in a new self. That was back in April, and funny thing, is that I think I still am. I like transition and change, but only when it is fast. I’m learning that this process can be done in many ways, but if I am to change my ways, even this phase must be done differently. And if I am truly tradjecting toward and emerging as a more natural hybrid version of myself, I am to respect the laws of nature, and shed my skin at nature’s pace.

Resolve = trust that the change will happen, so let it happen, and enjoy how it happens when it happens.

I DID NOT KNOW THAT LOVE COULD BE LIKE THIS

I knew of kindred spirits, fairy tales, and soulmates, but to be experiencing this right now in my own life is one that I still have a hard time believing. It’s through the recipe of connection, chemistry, and chronology (timing), that this miraculous thing happen, and I am both grateful and in disbelief. I am uncertain with this feeling of certainty, yet certain that the uncertainty is healthy. Love like this is both overwhelming and insatiable.

Resolve = take in the context of these feelings, search for the source of these thoughts of uncertainty, explore with curiosity the reason of why ‘things like this happen for a reason’, and just take it day by day floating in it’s ocean of opportunities.

ARTICULATING THE INNER WORLD TAKES TRAINING AND PRACTICE

I’ve been a part of a communication course called Authentic Relating this fall season, and it has been a game-changer in my understanding of the art and science of connection. It has helped me better share what’s on the inside with more awareness, curiosity, and equanimity. It has also helped me identify poor habits, odd tendencies, and unsavoury default patterns. By heading down a path less travelled, we open ourselves to the mucky roads and the misadventures, but also to the transformative magic that arises within. I welcome it all and honour its value as a student of life.

Driver = this ‘good’ new habit will reveal the ‘bad’ old habits, and provide a road to travel, encouraging the use of empathy and curiosity for mindful & heartful development.

THE BURNOUT FROM ‘BECOMING’

I bottomed out as a workaholic earlier this year, midway through my 7-month sabbatical. I tied much of who I was to my productivity. My productivity was an essential reflection of my self worth. While away, without my drug of choice, work, my identity was in question. The reality of an empty schedule, no routine, no workplace to check in with, no clients and classes to prepare for, I felt aimless. I couldn’t grasp what freedom felt like because of its vastness and lack of destination. There was nothing to hold on to and control.

We strive endlessly to become; become a title, a salary, a higher self, yet when we get there, we can’t help but seek the next mountain to climb, without ever giving ourselves the time to soak it in, suspend care free, float with no responsibilities. Just ‘being’ is a new headspace that frightens me, it questions the fabric of my existence, but it also helps me balance my relationship with ‘becoming’.

Driver = creating time and space to be, be without a goal, be without a reason, be without a tangible purpose, and make being the purpose. Then see what happens from that place.

MY LIFE TEAMMATE IS BACK

I have a twin brother named Nathan. He has recently re-entered my day-to-day life after recently moving back home to Toronto from 11 years of permanent residency in Hong Kong. We have become the independent men we are today in large part due to our twinhood. Immersed with an upbringing filled with competition, camaraderie, and companionship, then stripped away from it into adulthood, our individualism brought us new paths. Now that we’re back together again, I am driven to rewire our twinhood patterns, sync up the complex differences that have shaped our independence, and learn to harmonize as collaborators in life.

Driver = see each other as resources of alternate life experience and leverage each other’s value to produce more wholesomeness and fulfillment in the world around us.

FEAR AND FULFILLMENT

On the continuum of life’s endeavours, we find ourselves moving away from fear and towards fulfillment. My adventures have invited me to both ends of the continuum, beyond my comfort boundaries, and deep into my growth zone, both intentionally and unintentionally. As I look back at the vivid moments fraught with fear while immersed in a fulfillment activity (like this Pacuare River rafting expedition), I realize how they are most often one in the same. Costa Rica to me was the sum of fear and fulfillment. Love with my new partner is the sum of fear and fulfillment. And my next endeavours with her in 2022 will be an expression of this learning.

Driver = rejoice in the unity of opposites, utilize your tools from life experience, continue to self-develop, and take those risks that require you to leave a part of you behind.

May the flow be with you