A Cloth-Walled Room

There is something about being new that is hard for me. Something about entering a new space with limited information and limited ability to jump in. This is odd considering I do a lot of new things, a lot of the time.

There is also this metaphorical “box” that I walk into time and time again in this process.

A painful middle zone, which I poetically envision as a “cloth walled room”, a reference to my childhood bedroom at my dad´s house. At the beginning there was no wallpaper, just this odd pink and purple fabric covering the walls. I have not thought about that bedroom much until now as I sit on the plane from Iquitos to Lima. I am not sure why it comes to mind but it really does.

I think in this new room, I enter a painful space of feeling helpless. Like somewhere, in my wiring, I have wiring programmed to believe that I need to be able to help right away. Being in the room without being super helpful makes me feel inert and like an idiot.

But alas, it has happened time and time again.

The gift, of this very flawed, yet endlessly devising human brain of ours, is that we can reflect on ourselves.

The gift, which I poetically find to be like a miracle of our own self reflection, that says, “This is hard for me. Notice that.” The part of me that says, “You are struggling. This is something you have experienced before.”

And so… that information flows. Here, I write it.