As humans we’re driven by achievement. Programmed to conquer. Wired to overcome obstacles, to evolve. If the summit is no longer surrounded by air containing the right amount of oxygen for the human species to thrive does not matter. It’s there: we have to climb it. Someone has to climb it. We as a specious must overcome this high point of ground and climb it!
I’ve made multiple efforts in my life to quench this thirst. To achieve something special -something worthwhile. Something I can show for that will make everyone realize that I’m good for something. Special. Achievements I thought would change how people perceived me, that mattered..how I felt about me..! I figured along with this I’d gain confidence and would find some peace, get rid of that thing inside of you telling you you’re a fraud waiting to be exposed. That you’re nothing. Bad, even. Be that stripped for talent, beauty, intelligence or a good personality. Most of us know the feeling, right?
I, for once, thought leaving Norway for South Africa for a year as an exchange student at the age of 16 would prove something. That it’d be something that would prove that I had something. Grit. Or something. That I was bold, original. But I failed myself in probably all areas that year and felt even worse returning. I didn’t do well in school, I partied way too much and nourished only one thing all year, an eating disorder that consumed almost all of me.
Years later I thought getting the education I did would definitely prove something. Because that was known to be hard. And only people with true passion and dedication, willing to abandon all social-life, would make it through. I experienced that I was average in most areas, brilliant in few, but if something less than particularly talented and even though I never missed a deadline I lacked the passion or dedication to risk everything for anything.
I also learned that I’m really good at decision-making, that I have a strong logical sense and great at solving problems. I’m a natural leader that has a large (positive) presence in a room. One that summed up the three years I went there at my graduation runway show by my principal actually. Whispering in my ear as he handed me my diploma: brightest smile of them all. I appreciated that.
Still didn’t change the way I felt about myself rolling my diploma up, tucking it in one of the many boxes and headed home for Bergen only to be left for many years in my parents attic.
Over the following years I’ve let go of that strive. No longer have it. It may creep up on me sometimes, but mostly serves as a motivation to get projects done.. And if I meet someone I’m intimidated by that embodies ‘everything’ I feel that I’m lacking in qualities, talent, ambition, beauty or achievements, I simply remind myself that I’m a really honest, kind, including person who’s really true to herself. I’m no longer afraid to say out loud what I don’t care about. Funnily enough, cause it sounds easy, it takes some gut to do that! And are qualities that are good and rare. Then I’m fine again. Because most people, I find, walk around pretending to care about shit they really dont only to impress others. To make themselves look more impressive or interesting. And they don’t need to!
Motherhood! Now I’m getting to the point..! Is my first big personal ‘now I know for sure that I’ve achieved something challenging that says something about me and that I’m really really proud of’ -win. People become parents every second of every day, yet it feels so special. And challenging. I’m not saying that getting children is the only important thing and without the experience you’re missing out (believe me, I thought I would for many years and am convinced I would’ve been as happy without it). For some people it’s their profession. For some it’s traveling. For some it’s their relationships, friendships. Family. Charity. Faith, politics.. And some hold a hobby above all, or spend all their time advancing their talent. A need to create and be creative. For me, I’ve realized, it was growing a tiny human and bringing him into the world. I get to show him everything for the first time and witness his awe.
I’m so damn proud of myself. I’m so proud of my son and the man I already know he is growing to be. So many of my insecurities are now just small pieces and burnt scraps at the bottom. And I really don’t give a shit about half the shit anymore. Everything I may achieve in my professional-life or otherwise are just sprinkles. Extra seasoning. The world and all the people in it can evolve as much as it wants now. I can stay right here and still be content with what I have done in this world.
And that,…feels really good. Plus I have a new best friend. He may scream at me for no apparent reason, suck the life out of me, pee all over the place, but he’s the brightest of lights when he smiles. I’ve never felt more special than when I made him laugh for the first time. It was the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard and it made me cry instantly.
I have so much to write about it though! Again; not gonna let this new role take over my whole being, but…humour me, if only for a second.
How well your piece flowed Viktoria. Time is short as I rush for last minute Christmas gifts before heading off (Covid permitting) to the old Viking lands with their time steeped place names…James Herriot Country (Yorkshire and a little beyond).
Perhaps it is not so much a matter of proving to ourselves we can do things or indeed proving to others that we can do them. Maybe it is more a matter of self discovery?
Every one of us; no matter who we love, is an individual. We live our life as a solitary traveller who comes across other individual travellers.
I have to remind myself to be generous and warm to them all, not just favoured ones, because not only can I learn from their experiences, tales and presence but hopefully they can draw the same from me and I don’t have to agree with everything they say say or do.
All that I say may be a load of old tosh, but in reasoning and rejecting my experiences, they will have learned something hopefully.
We live at an interesting time when collectively we are all unsure of the path ahead be it the threats from viruses or environmental issues or AI or the collapse of our communications systems, etc.
After the initial battle with an elder sibling, we find we learn from them and then if a younger one should come along, we find we become a teacher…bringing a child into the world is no different I guess, and as we teach, we see anew the things we had forgotten and re-appraise their relevance to our quest.
There we are……quite short for a change (and no humour either).
Seasoned greetings (oh),
Peter <3
How great to be able to read you again Viktoria 🙂 I really like how you write and that courage to share your thoughts in a medium like this, let them loose to the world.
I felt most of your words, not the motherhood part though, I don’t know what that is, but it makes me happy that it is having such good impact in your life and happiness and fullfilment 🙂
Regarding to the rest… I definitely know what you mean. It can take many forms, that feeling of inadequacy, or that feeling of “maybe if I did this, or if I say this, or if I have that job, or that figure, or “*insert some random thing here” I would be better/happier/more valuable…”. I find myself once again, and maybe more than ever, revisiting those feelings. A kind of “lostitude” (I know it’s not a word…). Now at 37 I think I feel more lost than ever, like I don’t really know me or what I am here for… A bit like any given character of Haruki Murakami (if you never read anything by him, I definitely recomend, maybe starting with “Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world” or “Killing commendatore”). His main characters are always portraited bit like that, so lost, so in search of something… Or themselves… Your text definitely made me think of that.
Anyway, I digress 😀
It is really nice to read your happiness 🙂
Thank you very much for sharing!
And so ‘As Humans’ we find that as we have ‘rolled round in Earth’s diurnal course’, we are now very reluctantly all being forced, against our will, to sway to ‘the still, sad music of humanity’ with not just what is going on, very brutally, in the Eastern part of Europe but in many other victimised states around the world.
Never have the words of ‘Pale Blue Dot’ by Carl Sagan seemed more poignant.
https://youtu.be/GO5FwsblpT8
‘As humans’ all we can do is help where we can, spread love and understanding where we can; buoyed in the knowledge that strategy, campaigns and states built upon cruelty and untruths will always ultimately fail as they undermine their own foundations.
As was observed in the ancient Cursor Mundi and the work of Chaucer, ‘modre wol out’, it always does.
(In Chaucer’s case, I seem to remember, the perpetrator suffering the fate of being ‘anhanged by the nekke-bon’. (Hopefully we have moved on from that these days, not sinking to the same depraved level of the offenders)).
‘As Humans’, let’s celebrate and promote love, understanding and hope for a peaceful and better, brighter future.
‘Bless’d are they who have the time and patience to listen, when all is so very quiet’.
(Sounds Biblical doesn’t it? O’course it could mean they have nothing better to do)! 😉