the excuse of personality

who do you think you are?

Hello friend. And happy day. This is little blessings, a batch of love notes I send out to inspire your curiosity, pause, and practices in intentional love. You, my dear, are the light interrupting the dark. Thank you for being here.

As I befriend this intrepid guide called Courage, I’m charmed by the familiar unlikelihood of it all. My heart is plotting adventures that have me meandering, racing, wandering down roads I might not otherwise choose— or even find.

And yet, there they are.

Which isn’t new at all. I’ve been remembering, as Courage and I venture along, our travels together.

Those times when I was far too young to be caring for someone’s baby but there I was, babe wondering over babe. And I pedalled that brown ten-speed— ten speeds for a ten-year old—well beyond the borders of the neighborhood into the distant, uncharted terrain by the lake. I can pretty much ascribe every experience from ages 13-17 to the bold dictate of the heart. She never really told me where we were going but she certainly demanded the journey. We got so existential together that the right action was always the one that challenged what anyone said about normal.

(May the piercings I inflicted on the bodies and simple comforts of many friends be healed.)

(May their parents also forgive me… I know one, sigh, who remains a holdout.)

And on and on, one adventure after another. One unlikely path twisting into another winding climb arriving at one more perilous, toe-clenching descent.

One foot in front of the other, and other fancy moves, as required.

Which brings me to personality. And the funny way we pretend it’s a constant over the persistently changing landscape of existence. Like, I am courageous! When, in fact, all the things I did in the past weren’t me being courageous but rather courage supporting me.

In my day-to-day, I get to sit with folks seeking to cultivate a little more joy, a little more peace, and the graceful self-regulation required to sustain what they grow.

Following the wisdom of the Taittiriya Upanishad, I call the whole person into awareness. Every person— you, too!— is a work of art, comprised of several interwoven, interdependent strata. In yoga philosophy, these are known as the panchamaya kosha, or five, nested illusions.

See if you can feel with me as you read: your body, your energy, your mind, your personality, your bliss.

Wait, didn’t I say ‘illusions?’ While bliss may feel elusive, and energy somewhat illusory, this body of yours may not seem like an illusion to you. Still, this word maya, in Sanskrit, means something that separates us from what’s real. Something like a distraction. Something shifty and changeable.

(Shout out to an alternative meaning for maya: in Maori, it’s courage. How’s that for interwoven interdependencies?)

When we consider our whole being, let’s pay heed to the parts that assemble the whole.

We exist within these body temples engineered with superb refineries to process all we eat, drink, breathe, and experience. Still, the temples weather in the elements and require our careful maintenance as they change. In other words, our bodies and energy systems need us to fuel up, move, keep clean, and rest, and we mostly know all this even if we disregard their call.

The mind, for some of us, presents a different pickle. I often ask clients: do you guide your mind or does it only guide you? This mind space also requires our diligent attention, which means we learn to focus our attention, to build strategies to focus our attention, and to fuel ourselves with food and experience that promote focus instead of distraction. (Ahem… perhaps long-form substack posts is preferrable to scrolling through youtube shorts? Just a question.)

Have you made it this far?! If so, kudos to your mind skills. Perhaps you’ve noticed how peering into the space of mind can be like riding moving staircases. It’s easy to get lost when our attention falters.

Now… how about these personalities?

Let’s all just take a breath together to reflect on how generous the ancients were with their wisdom to pull together a philosophy that united body, energy, mind, personality, and spirit. Modern psychology is only a little over a century old and it still seems to struggle to integrate the body, the mind, and the spirit in its exploration of the way we present ourselves. It definitely doesn’t realize how perfect we are— flaws and all.

When it comes to the personality, our job is, once again, one of awareness.

And tons of self-compassion.

Think of the personality as a windscreen on which our experiences splatter. Sometimes, we clean our windows right away. Sometimes, we let the dead bugs and birdpoop stick, linger, dry. Then we drive around believing the world is all dead bugs and birdpoop. We think we’re the experiences stuck on the screen. But maybe we just have to clean the window.

For example, I swam competitively in high school. I was fast. And then I stopped. Each of those experiences— swimming, winning, quitting— left a mark on the windshield. I could call myself a swimmer, a winner, a quitter. All are true. Each can inform my perspective in vastly different ways. And I get to choose.

Maybe I cleaned the window and none of the above define me.

But maybe the glass is filthy.

This is when we start to use the personality as an excuse. That splatter may limit me, motivate me, or crush me. Based on our perspectives, we may behave in ways that don’t benefit ourselves, our families, or our greater community.

Let’s say I call myself a swimmer. This may inspire me to get to the water… or it may keep me from exploring other ways of exercising.

Let’s say I call myself a winner. This may inspire me toward the hard work and resilience required to succeed. Or it may hurl me into a false sense of entitlement.

Let’s say I call myself a quitter. This may inspire me to stop before I start.

Sometimes we do this. Sometimes, we let the sticky stuff on windshield tell us a story about ourselves as though our personalities aren’t subject to change. But… well… everything is subject to change. Our personalities are no more static than our aging bodies or the seasons changing outside.

Maybe we’ve learned to blame our personalities for commitments we don’t keep, for difficulties we have with others, for our distrust in people, politics, the world. We might hear ourselves or others saying: ‘I don’t do that soft, emotional stuff because that’s not how I was raised,’ or ‘I’ve always been fidgety so I can’t be calm,’ or ‘If you had my childhood, you’d be angry too.’ Maybe we’ve heard, ‘No one understands me,’ ‘I’m not good enough,’ or ‘I’ve always been a mess.’

Yeah. Life is messy. The windscreen gets really dirty.

Let’s give ourselves some compassion for the journeys we’ve taken to accumulate the crud on the glass. And then, mindfully, let’s examine the stories that dirt has persuaded us to believe. We might be wonderfully surprised to find enough dirt to grow a garden.

We’re all in constant flux. We’ve felt the coming and going of pain, weight, stress, and sadness. We’ve felt the coming and going of certainty. We’ve experienced the elation and loss of change since the moment of our birth.

As you sit for a moment, look at your windscreen. What are some of the ways you let old stories about you impact the way you move, or don’t move, toward the future? How are old beliefs about yourself keeping you from the miracle of growth?

Let’s talk about bliss next time, whaddya say?

(My aim with little blessings is to share love. For those of you who want to make a little contribution without committing to a subscription, perhaps you’d care to buy me a book? I am… a book nerd?!)

two creatures after a chilly, winter swim.