There is this story my mom tells me with laughter about when I was little. I don’t remember it actually happening, and I honestly can’t remember the details of the story SHE tells—where we were, how old I was, why we even had this conversation, but here is how I imagine it:
I’m a little blonde girl about three, maybe four years old. I’m standing on the rung of a pasture gate, looking at a bunch of cows scattered about the field chewing grass while the sunlight warms their back.
I say, “When I grow up, I want to be a cow.”
“You mean a cow-girl?” she laughs.
I glare at her with all the fire of a young girl who hasn’t yet learned that anger is a guarded door with a large sign hung on it that reads “No Girls Allowed.”
“No. A COW.”
“Oh.” She says taken aback by the heat in my eyes. Then her face warms back into a smile “ Let me know how that works out for you.”
I usually laugh right along with her when she tells this story. But I thought of it today, and this time the remembering of it brought a stab of grief. Because, the thing is, some days I wish that little girl could have gotten her wish.
I’ve been doing a lot of Internal Family Systems work this year. If you aren’t familiar with IFS, this a rabbit hole worthy of exploring, but here I will only say that it is a therapy modality designed to help us access different “parts” of our selves in order to unburden them and make more room for “Self” energy (which essentially is an emotionally mature version of ourselves").
Today, as I was going through my to-do list, thinking about my goals, and trying to pump myself up to complete a long list of tasks, I developed a feeling of anxiety and a very strong pulsing headache right behind my left eye.
I’m getting better at recognizing when one of my parts is being triggered, and I knew that probably the best course of action would be to pause and listen to what this feeling or part was trying to tell me.
Here is the conversation I had with this part:
Part: I need you to listen.
Me: I’m here. I’m listening.
Part: I want to escape. I want to get out of your head. I can’t find a way out.
Me: Why do you want to leave?
Part: There is too much to do and worry about. It’s overwhelming. It’s heavy. I feel suffocated in here and like there is no way for me to succeed. I’d rather leave and just float around in nature where there is nothing to DO. No doing…just being. I want it so bad, but I can’t find a way out. Everywhere I turn in here there is someone telling me to get to work, to do something different, to try harder. I don’t think I can do that anymore. I’d rather leave…or even die, but I can’t figure out how to do either one of those things.
Me (sensing there was something this part wanted me to ask): What question do you want me to ask you?
Part: I want you to know who I am.
Me: Who are you?
Part: I am Kimber.
Me: How old are you?
Part: I am 4. I am the version of you that wants to be a cow. The version of you that wants to lie in the sunlight like a sleepy cat.
I hate responsibility. I don’t want it. But I’m not bad. I just want to enjoy the sunlight and the grass. That’s all I want.
I don’t want a duty. I don’t want to show anyone “the way.” I don’t want to prove myself. I don’t want to be responsible for anything—not even myself. I just want to lay in the sun. I want to watch the grass grow. I want to listen to the waves. I want to breathe. I want to be. I want to EXIST.
This part went on to say that she always hated that song “oh cow, oh cow, what use are you?” and “Why does a cow need to be of use? It just IS.”
[I searched high and low throughout the interwebs to find a clip of this song to share with you with no luck, so apparently I’m not the only one who hated that song, because no one liked it enough to record it’s existence online.]
She told me she wanted to go to the Hundred Acre Wood where the things to do served no purpose at all. Stealing from Kenny Loggins, she said, “I just want to chase clouds and count bees.”
Return to Pooh Corner—Kenny Loggins
I’m reading this beautiful book called “The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible” by Charles Eisenstein. I think a few of the things I have read in this book over the past week have been waking this part of me up—waking up the part of me that wants to be done with doing for doings sake. I would like to share some of these passages here.
The most pervasive, life-consuming form of scarcity is that of time… “primitive” people generally don’t experience a shortage of time. They don’t see their days, hours, or minutes as numbered. They don’t even have a concept of hours or minutes. “Theirs,” says Helena Norberg-Hodge in describing rural Ladakh, “is a timeless world.” I have read accounts of Bedouins content to do nothing but watch the sands of time pass, of Piraha fully absorbed in watching a boat appear on the horizon and disappear hours later, of native people content to literally sit and watch the grass grow. This is a kind of wealth nearly unknown to us.
Scarcity of time also draws from the scarcity of money. In a world of competition, at any moment you could be doing more to get ahead. At any moment you have a choice whether to use your time productively. Our money system embodies the maxim of the separate self: more for you is less for me. In a world of material scarcity, you can never “afford” to rest at ease.
That passage is from his chapter named “Scarcity.” In his next chapter, titled “Doing,” he says the following:
All of these flavors of scarcity share a common root, a kind of existential scarcity for which I cannot find a name. It is a scarcity of being, the feeling “I am not enough” or “There is not enough life.” Born of the cutoff of our extended selves that inter-exist with the rest of the universe, it never lets us rest. It is a consequence of our alienation, our abandonment to a dead, purposeless universe of force and mass, a universe in which we can never feel at home, a universe in which we are never held by an intelligence greater than our own, never part of an unfolding purpose. Even more than the scarcity of time or money, it is this existential unease that drives the will to consume and control.
The primary habit that arises from it is the habit of always doing. Here and now is never enough.
He draws a conclusion in his next chapter, titled, “Non-doing.”
At some point, we are just going to have to stop. Just stop, without any idea of what to do…we are lost in a hellscape carrying a map that leads us in circles, with never a way out. To exit it, we are going to have to drop the map and look around.
This last passage reminds me of a vision I had while working with an intuitive healer in October of 2022. As a non-religious, Post-Mormon, the word “vision” carries a lot of baggage for me, but I don’t know what else to call these moments I have of seeing images that carry truth to me through metaphor, so for now, “vision” it is.
I saw myself as a little girl looking down on a grey-scale world of business men bustling about in long trench coats, carrying brief cases and looking down at their pocket watches. They were all power-walking with great purpose in different directions. In fact, I was the only being as far as the eye could see who was NOT walking purposefully about, and I felt an immense amount of pressure to join them. I observed them carefully, trying to ascertain how everyone seemed to know where to go and what to do, and why everyone was in such a great hurry. But, as far as I could tell, they were just hurriedly wandering about in convoluted circles—with no final destination at all.
I moved myself to the middle of the meandering crowd hoping that I would be able to find someone who could explain to me what was going on and where I was supposed to be going, but, to my dismay, no one could see me. I began to feel scared and started questioning my own existence—WHY could no one see me??—when, from behind the leg of a power-walking business man, popped a little boy with blonde hair. He smiled at me and beckoned me to follow him, and my relief was immediate. Someone could SEE me, someone was going to tell me what was going on here and what it was I was supposed to be doing.
The little boy chattered excitedly at me as I followed him through the grey-clad mass of people, but I couldn’t understand a word he said—I so badly wanted to know what it was I was supposed to be doing, and I think that’s all I had ears for. Eventually we came to a beautiful fountain away from the crowd, and he sat down on the edge of the concrete that contained the water. I followed suite, and no sooner had I done so, then he pulled an apple out of his pocket and offered it to me. The apple was a vivid red and provided stark contrast to our grey surroundings. I reached out for the apple, brought it to my lips, and took a bite.
My inner world exploded into a symphony of vivid colors, textures and sounds, accompanied by the sharp sweet-tart taste of the apple on my tongue. That apple became my whole world.
And that was the end of the vision.
And this is the end of this post.
I will leave you with a song (HERE) that I stumbled upon earlier this week, and a reminder that you are ENOUGH. Right now. In this moment.