by Kelsey Oke
In a world full of innocent fabrications and filters, it’s so easy to feel lost in the spurious sea of simulation. We lie about our age on dating apps, we embellish our experiences with music and overlays, and we forge feigned realities just hoping no one will dare to question or discredit whatever we’re posting.
Authenticity feels foreign and being veritable feels much too intimate. When did it become so extreme just to be genuine with each other (with ourselves)? If we are all human with human faults and human failings and human flaws, why is it so terrifying to identify those frailties? To acknowledge them and to accept them? Who are we trying to be without them? And why…
Flaw: a feature that mars the perfection of something; defect; fault: a crack, break, breach.
I do recognize and appreciate our society’s efforts to debunk the ‘perfect’ myth, or at least my algorithm’s. Somewhere along the line (unknowingly) I came to ‘surround’ myself with positive, accepting, realistic images and captions and accounts that are truly trying to redefine what it means to be the most supreme and immaculate versions of ourselves.
In the words of one of (at least a few of) our favs: “We deserve to let ourselves go. / Let us go on. / Let us go be, / To change, / Adapt, / Shape and reshape, / A million times over. / We deserve to let ourselves have our stories written on our skin. / And on our hearts. / Because it’s not a performance. / And it’s not perfect. / It’s life. / Living. / With bodies and minds and spirits so capable of carrying us through. / So when the cheers and praise and criticism fade into the background, / We simply go forward. / Knowing with every mark on our skin, every fold in our bodies, every bend and shape and scar we wear … / There we are.” - @thebirdspapaya
I am thankful for women like Sarah. I am thankful for the imperfections that have seen me through. I am thankful for these mangled knees and scarred up legs, because still, they carry me. I am thankful for this body that holds me healthy, and this mind that is kind to itself on the tougher days. I am thankful for all of the missteps, the stumbles (face plants) and wrong turns along the way that all helped me to arrive.
This month won’t be perfect (cue this delay!), but it will see me. I will show up when I can and forgive myself for being late. I will try my hardest. I will be thankful for all that I am and all that I have, and for all of the spaces in between.
When I was 21 years old I almost slept through my connection in Munich en route from Toronto to Milan. One suitcase, one solo passenger, one aching heart, and Chapter One of my Abroad Life lying in wait. Who was I, to be so brave?
When I was 22 I held his hand stepping off of that second international flight, taking my second international job, moving into my second international home, beginning Chapter Two of this life I knew would be unparallelled, now that this time he was next to me, instead of breaking my heart at the airport. Who was I, to be so sure?
When I was 23 I came running home. I quit my job, I backed out of my British lease, he broke my heart again, anyway. My dream life, my 5 years of uni and 3 invested in him to get us to ‘exactly where we wanted to be’ was going up in flames. Who was I, to have failed?
When I was 24, I came blinking out of the airport after the longest possible flight and hopped into a car of girls my age I’d only ‘met’ on Facebook from 15,000km away. I took their spare room in their little southern Sydney home, without a job or a partner or a clue in the world. I felt so happy I cried that night. Who was I, to be starting over?
When I was 25 I let him convince me all over again that our abroad lives were meant to be in parallel. I left my ‘happiest life yet’ not realizing I was also leaving my happiest identity behind with it. I moved to the small Thai island where I saw the ugliest versions of myself through the pain and rage and jealousy and shame I had enabled and harvested for so many years. Who I was during these two years, and what I survived, are some of the worst and proudest details of this story.
This Story that is my life, with all of these different chapters that have seen different shapes and shades of my identity. It makes it impossible to know, even all of these years later, who I really am. Who was I back then? How much of her is still here and now? Where is my center? How far off of that center have I found myself, or do I still find myself on the days when balancing it all seems toughest. After two years in Thailand, there was Madrid, Spain for another two. Then there was Zanzibar, Tanzania for just 9 months before the world shut down and the universe brought me here: to Nassau. Chapter Seven.
So who am I now?
Over the past eleven years I have found a most noteworthy and impressive balance between making intentional next steps, while also letting the wind (and the universe) simply blow me from life to life. I have loved it that way. But balancing other aspects of this (at times) comically diverse lifestyle has been harder to wrap my mind around. How do I navigate having lived so many different lives on so many different continents, learning different languages and curriculums, building different versions of myself to best fit all of the different relationships and opportunities I was coming into?
How have I been both a teaching assistant and the Headteacher of multiple schools? How did I live as a solo muzungu in a 400 square foot African hut without running water or electricity and walk into Justin Timberlake’s kitchen only a few months later? I have worked for pennies to put together a school’s first ever playground. I have survived two near-death motorbike accidents and an eye infection that left me blind for eleven days in the middle of the outback. I shared mushroom shakes with my mother on Gili Air, and sailed for two weeks along the eastern coastline of Spain. I have hiked more than one volcano. I learned the news of my best friend’s passing, standing in the middle of Trafalgar Square. I took a pill in Ibiza and I’ve skied the Swiss Alps. Angkor Wat sunrises, Chiang Mai elephants, Christmases in 6 different countries, Red Light District black outs, sailing the Scottish lochs, Philippine fireflies, caught in an actual monsoon on a dhow boat far off the coast of Dar Es Salaam, a diamond ring in a tropical garden…
But who am I as a result of it all?
Am I meant to be some final product of all of these young moments?
Our south nodes can be so telling. I was reckless, and brave, and defiant and careless. I was invincible. I was unbreakable, and I felt so lucky to be out here testing that, taunting and teasing and pushing this world to its limits with me. How could it rock me hard enough to ever stop running? I was arrogant and I was selfish, in only the most remarkable ways a 20-something year old can somehow get away with. This is the me-first energy of Aries season, in desperate need of some perspective.
Because the world did knock me around. And some of those scars run much deeper than I ever wanted to give them credit for. And many of these parts of my identity are only just coming to the surface now, retroactively demanding a recognition of the choices I made then, that I couldn’t even begin to understand until now.
Who we are now and who we are meant to become. Our True Nodes. Forming, establishing, maintaining an identity we can be proud of has to be one of the most fundamental goals in our lives. Navigating that identity with kindness towards ourselves, with patience & permission to bend and shift and veer at times, this is essential.
I think there is so much value in learning about these things, taking (with however many grains of salt necessary) into account that not all of it is in our control. This month we are talking about the harmony-seeking Libra: the balance between our identities of a past life, who we were ‘back then,’ and the guiding lights of our future - the unknown. Acknowledging and appreciating all that we have been through to get us here, and beginning to understand that our destinies, our purposes, our divine decrees are still waiting patiently and proudly for us to claim. The North Node dictates what we are moving into - which may be scary since it’s a place that we have never been before.
But if I have learned anything from this whirlwind decade abroad, it's that the scariest, the most foreign, unknown and uncharted lands are always the most beautiful.
For someone who has lived arguably one of the dreamiest early adult lives imaginable, kissing corners of this earth most might only daydream of, swapping sentiments with the kinds of stunning souls in picture perfect settings usually reserved for the silver screen, breathing in lungfuls and eyefuls and heartfuls of some of the most magical imaginable moments… I have somehow remained utterly logical, pleasantly pragmatic, unapologetically realistic. And in the past ten years of letting the wind blow me through more countries than years I currently hold, this is one of my proudest traits: not letting the romance of life in all of its changing seasons and sensibilities sweep me too far away from the truth.
For me, it feels essential (not just important or practical) to keeping this pinch-me lifestyle afloat: to always remain clear-eyed and sound-minded no matter which foreign tongue or exotic experience or tempting local delicacy is tugging me (urging me) deeper and deeper into a ‘perfect fantasy life abroad’ mentality that all of this at times seems to grant!
But this is still real life. There are still jobs and bills and commitments to maintain, relationships still get sticky, families are still far away, we’re still on the edges of a global pandemic here (in between the bottle-popping boat trip weekends). And I still make an active effort to cultivate clarity on the details of this life I have worked so hard to curate, always shining my own light on what is real versus imagined, but continuing to do my best listening to both my head and my heart. This is how I stay tethered to my truths.
My favourite illogical fundamental truth is my absolute belief that the universe WILL work itself out for us. Something I cannot hold or measure or identify, and yet it remains one of my deepest resounding principles. And to blindly trust the universe is a dreamy notion. To leave it all up to the heavens or the energies or any higher power you might subscribe to is absolutely irrational. It is obscure, and unknown, and it certainly leaves us exposed to the foolish beliefs that we don’t hold our own powers to create our own realities. But to me, that is the beauty of it all. Believing so firmly in that unknown force is the power I hold (to let it all just happen).
And as this month comes to a creeping close, I am reminded of how blurry these lines can get, especially during Pisces season. What is real and what is filtered? How do dreams weigh next to logic? Let’s face it: this is a dreamy freaking island. I drive that ocean road at sunrise and sunset each day, letting it all take my breath away. These are our ultramarine moments, crisp and defined as a paint-by-numbers kit, but they are trimmed in certain fundamental truths. And we must continue these habits of reasoning in accordance with the principles of logic. Because it is only in our own personal principles (of logic, of passion, integrity, honesty, so and so…) where we will find our truths. Our bottom lines. Our ride or die feels. If only we can remain as rational as we are romantic. The meeting place of these two notions (typically misunderstood in parallel as squabbling siblings rather than yin and yang) is where the (lucid) magic happens.
So this month, take a pause, and ask yourself about your Truths. Your Imaginations and your Intuitions. Your Idealisms and your Realisms. You are Cerebral and Ethereal in all of its glorious, obverse oneness.
]]>It is with my greatest pleasure to start this private blog where we publish our monthly moon musings and a recap of our circle activities, and it is with greatest gratitude from all of us that you have registered, signed up, and visited this page.
We are all passionate learners and dedicated professionals who are contributing our time, knowledge, energy and space pro bono. This page was created with certain restrictions in place is to protect our consciousness, topics, and ritual activities from being misquoted, and misused by people who have not yet come to understand our purpose.
This section in my website will hopefully be a beacon and companion to all of you as we journey together across space and time.
Warm blessings,
Michelle - Island Align
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