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Sara Emily Atkins
who am I? I’ve been trying to nail that down for years, ever since someone told me that the sum of my experiences doesn’t dictate what or who the ”self” is. I think that someone may have been Kierk...view morewho am I? I’ve been trying to nail that down for years, ever since someone told me that the sum of my experiences doesn’t dictate what or who the ”self” is. I think that someone may have been Kierkegaard or my best friend. Each are as intellectually amazing. One is dead. I guess it makes the most sense to give credit to the bestie. Also known as the Chu or the Grand Chu depending on the day. You’ll meet him soon enough. He has been an influential force in my life.
So. I grew up when Kevin Smith movies were all the rage, porno mags were still passed surreptitiously around my group of friends like coveted gold and video games were moving from 64 bit pixellated madness to the ooey goodness of the modern era. In other words, sarcasm, sex and automation. My childhood was a stewpot of sarcastic one liners and technological wizardry.
I was the queen of many of these things. I lived a solid Bill Hicks / Hunter S. Thompson style existence for a while.Somewhere in my mid twenties I realized that I was hugely disconnected from the world as well as from myself and began to look for what tapped me into the universe and made me..me.
Call it a crisis of self.
I call it discovering my gypsy-ness, the part of me that would much rather climb trees and dance in fields of flowers then be a cog of the corporate world. Looking at this part of myself brought me to the practice of yoga and meditation and has permeated other areas of my life. One wouldn’t necessarily associate cooking or cleaning with self-awareness or self love but I do. One also wouldn’t associate smoking and drinking video game binges and reckless fornication with being enlightened either..but they have a home in this story as well. Oh and I’m also still a cog, in a job that I love most days. Other days it plucks at my gypsy heart strings and makes me pace like a caged jungle cat.
The process of learning who I really am (ongoing always) has been studded with flashes of emotional and mental enlightenment at its best and bone jarringly difficult at it’s worst. Always it is humorous. The horrid, teeth gnashing experiences are always the ones filled with or that need the most laughter…or so I have experienced in my own life.
I have learned…about 1 billionth of a percent of ” who I am” but it has been worthwhile and beautiful and continues to be. Seeing myself in the journey was the first step. Moving from the head to the heart is the rest of it…I plan on chasing it’s tail for the rest of my life. I might be hung over and half naked doing it..but fuck it…at least I’m alive, awake and willing to try.
I teach yoga to those enlightened few that want to hear my message. I invite you to as well: axismundiyoga.comview less