Chapter 14
CHECK IN WITH YOURSELF AS YOU EVOLVE
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Get to know yourself so that you can nurture your unique needs and show up to your life every day as your best self. But it’s also important to check in with yourself as you evolve. Don’t limit yourself by clinging to various lists of criteria and ideas about who you are. Instead, embrace the freedom to experience yourself every day without preconceived notions. In every new moment, you have the opportunity to surprise yourself, reinvent yourself, act spontaneously, and try new things.
It can be liberating in the process of cultivating self-awareness to create certain labels for yourself that help define you for others, so that you feel accepted as part of a community. However, just because you consider yourself to be something one day doesn’t mean you will resonate with that forever. I’d always considered myself to be an introvert, for example, and I still am in that I still require alone time to recharge. However, since I have gotten to know myself better and come to love myself, I am a whole lot more social than I used to be, and it opens me up in many ways to acknowledge that. My tolerance for being around other people for long periods of time without feeling depleted has doubled, if not tripled, from what it used to be. I even crave the company of others much of the time.
I think a lot of people make the mistake of labeling experiences as failures just because those experiences don’t pan out the way they expected. Couples fall in love and get married only to find themselves growing apart years later as they both evolve, and at that point they may separate. But this doesn’t have to be viewed as a “failed” marriage. It can instead be viewed as a successful marriage that didn’t last forever. A person might begin to pursue a particular career path only to decide later, after learning more about the field (and learning more about themselves), that it isn’t a fit. Such is life.
Nothing is static and nothing is guaranteed. But also, the end doesn’t always justify the means. Sometimes we all have to take certain risks or make certain commitments in order to get to know ourselves better. And just because an experience lasts for a period of time rather than forever doesn’t indicate failure and doesn’t mean the experience didn’t contribute value and meaning to your life.
I’ll share with you a personal example relating to my sexuality. I started defining myself as a lesbian from around the age of eighteen, when I first discovered I was attracted to women, and I clung very fiercely to this label for many years. However, more recently, I’ve begun to identify more with the term queer, which is more like a state of mind than a sexual orientation. So I’m thirty-one years old, and I’m committing to a new word to explain my sexuality, and I’m embracing it—because what’s the point of living if you don’t live with an open heart and allow yourself to be affected by new possibilities that enter your senses as you continuously rediscover yourself?
I’m going to share with you the following article from the Huffington Post because it ties together a lot of the perspectives I’ve discussed in this book, in addition to being something I resonate with on a very deep level:
Being Queer Means…
By Nadia Cho
“Queer” is not a term that is universally recognized and understood in the common vernacular. So I will attempt to present the many different sides of what being queer means. “Queer” can be used to describe someone’s sexual orientation or stand as a political statement. Its definition has many dimensions, from gender identification to a resistance against structural rigidity to a strange sensation or state of being. “Queer” isn’t a word that many people clearly understand when used to describe yourself. Allow me to elaborate what being queer personally means to me, as “queer” means different things to different people.
Being queer is first and foremost a state of mind. It is a worldview characterized by acceptance, through which one embraces and validates all the unique, unconventional ways that individuals express themselves, particularly with respect to gender and sexual orientation. It is about acknowledging the infinite number of complex, fluid identities that exist outside the few limited, dualistic categories considered legitimate by society. Being queer means believing that everyone has the right to be themselves and express themselves without being judged or hated because that doesn’t fit in with what’s normal. Being queer means challenging everything that’s considered normal.
Being queer means ceasing to think in binaries like “male” or “female,” “gay” or “straight,” “monogamous” or “non-monogamous,” because there are more than two sides to every person and every context. It means being aware of and OK with the fact that our own identities and sexualities are always in flux, never static. Being queer means recognizing that there are alternate gender identities, such as transgender or genderqueer or androgynous folks, and respecting that these identities are just as legitimate as those that are visible.
A queer worldview deconstructs and obliterates all established notions of gender. Gender is a set of socially constructed roles arbitrarily assigned to everyone based on physiological reproductive traits. Being queer means embracing supposedly “masculine” and “feminine” traits as simply universal human traits and ignoring the behavioral expectations that are socially imposed according to our non-consensually assigned gender. Genitals don’t tell men that they can’t wear dresses and women that they have to wait to be asked out; cultural norms dictate gendered behaviors. Being queer means doing away with gender altogether, because it restricts the ways people can freely and unlimitedly express themselves.
Being queer means being attracted to anyone, with no regard to a person’s gender or sex. It could mean someone is attracted to more than one gender, or even two genders. Being queer means you like what you like and you accept that your desires are dynamic and you are open to change. Being queer means being sex-positive and recognizing that sex is good and everyone has the right to have as much or as little of it as suits them. It means thinking about sex in different ways other than the heterosexual, male-pleasure-oriented, meant-for-reproduction kind.
Being queer means constantly questioning what’s considered “normal” and why that norm gets privileged over other ways of being. It means criticizing who sets these norms and recognizing the privilege that comes with being able to identify as “normal.” Being queer means confronting all forms of oppression and bringing unheard minority experiences and stories to light. Being queer means addressing and understanding the intersectionality between race, gender, sexuality, and class and how it affects each person’s experience and identity differently.
Being queer means searching for alternate ways of being and living. It means learning to appreciate and celebrate difference and striving for constructive, fair and happy ways to coexist with each other. Being queer means constantly looking for ways to be as inclusive as possible in order to create a world where everyone feels safe and accepted, in which there is true equality for every single person.
Being queer means embracing a free and open-ended identity by casting off all other identities that categorize us, and defining ourselves simply as human beings.7
I am going to go out on a limb here and say I think the world could benefit from more people adopting a queer mindset and accepting that ideas and identities are fluid rather than fixed. Regardless of who or what you choose to have sex with, let’s leave that part out of it and focus on the beauty that can come from seeing others and ourselves as transient beings in transient states of being.
Here’s some advice straight from me to you: take risks, aspire to achieve new goals, take action steps toward trying out the thing you are most curious about, meet new people, be curious, ask questions, and breathe new light into each new day. Adjust the way you navigate your life based on everything that comes your way. Make the time to check in and explore yourself on a regular basis.