Evolving Backwards: Becoming Who I Always Was
Spiraling, Not Climbing
I have noticed a phenomenon over the past decade or so of my life. It’s a strange feeling of growing backwards – or possibly realigning with a past version of myself in a new and more empowered way. It’s as if my life experience scooped out or buried part of who I am and I have since been in the process of filling that back up or uncovering it (choose your metaphor preference).
Wisdom I Wasn’t Ready For (Yet)
It brings to mind an experience I had during my early twenties. One of my professors recommended that I read “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse. I did, expecting a great expansion of mind and consciousness. Instead, I was annoyed. Siddhartha had all the knowledge at his fingertips, but he left and did a bunch of stuff that seemed not useful to me. In the end, he found enlightenment but I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just learn it from his teachers and not have to go through a bunch of muck. (I know, I know. I was young and I liked to experience life from the safety of stories.)
In my early thirties, I finally understood the importance of actual experience in the world. I had a major shift in my life around that time. I ended a marriage with the only man I had ever dated (an eleven-year relationship). I sold nearly everything I had except what I could cram into my Honda Fit and I moved from South Carolina to North Carolina where I knew a handful of people I met in some self-development programs.
It has been quite a journey.
Expansion in the Spin
The few years I spent sort of free-falling and spinning my wheels were a time of incredible learning. It was often stressful because even though my natural inclination is to go with the flow and trust in myself and abilities, I didn’t have enough confidence to continue to follow that. I allowed myself to bend under what I thought was the knowledge of others. Their certainty made me doubt myself. In the end, I chose the safety of returning to “normal.”
It may not sound sexy, but going back to being normal (this basically boils down to taking on a steady job in my case) was a great choice for me. It allowed me to take full control of my life. That was around 2012 and since then I have gained the confidence in myself that I felt was missing before. And my life has gotten steadily better. Not perfect, but I fully know that I am capable. I know that if I fail at something, I can just reassess and keep moving.
Reclaiming My Younger Self
So what does all of this have to do with evolving backwards?
What I’ve noticed is that part of the expansion of my life is in letting go of past angers, it is putting back into place habits that served me so well in the past that it is mind-boggling that I ever stopped them. It is getting back to that place of joy and curiosity that fed my creativity as a younger Sheila. It is spending time with my family and loved ones without worrying about what needs to get done. It is about living into each moment as best I can and loving it.
In a lot of ways, it is like becoming a child again. Or, at least childlike.
I recently moved back to South Carolina. After the move, I’ve been going through old journals, old files, seeing what I’ve accumulated over the past fourteen years. I’m often astounded at how much smarter I was in my teen years and early twenties. I knew so much, but I didn’t have the experience yet to really understand it. I was also kinda naïve and silly as well.
The cool thing is that here I am feeling my soul vibrating back in resonance with the Sheila that thought her life would look a lot different than it has. It is as if this pulsing of energy is shaking off all the blockages that separated us from what we dreamed could be. We can be the best of both of us.
I’m sure many of us have thought about our younger selves, “If I knew then, what I know now…” The thing is we know it now and what are we doing with it? What will I do with it?
Let’s find out together.
