The Construct
The construct, as I described in the journal entry entitled Beliefs and the Heart, is the vision of the world (rules & expectations) other people and institutions impose upon us. Our beliefs have been programmed, limiting our freedom to follow our inner voices. These ways were not always thrust upon us maliciously. I see it in 2 tiers: one is the overarching societal construct made up of the institutions that were formed to organize society, and the other is our families and friends who were products of the first, staying within the bounds of what was imposed upon them, and in turn, imposing a more relational version on us. To put it in those terms, it sounds limiting from the get go, if you believe we are souls having a human experience. We have been led to believe this is “how the world works” and we needed to follow these guidelines to survive. For most of my 20s and 30s, like many of you, I bought into this matrix. I didn’t like it because it felt like a game, but it felt like a zero sum game - you play to win, or you lose. I felt it was an act of strength to resist the voice inside me that questioned it. I accepted my part as a cog in the wheel and set about checking the boxes laid out for me. It was oppressive to my spirit, and year by year, I became less and less okay. The ideas of the construct BECOME our inner critic, our ideal life, the fairytale, beliefs, truth.
The “shoulds” of having a successful life according to the construct:
Pursue college after high school.
Pick a career based on how much money you can make.
Get married and have kids.
Stay married and “make it work.”
Work a secure 9-5 job - your life starts after 5.
Follow a specific religion because your family is involved in the church.
Buy instead of innovate.
Purchase products to fix your problems…for convenience, beauty, health, and keeping up with your peers.
Stay quiet when you feel strongly about something to avoid conflict.
Seek approval for validation.
Suck up your emotions, expressing them means you’re weak.
Outsource your happiness to external sources.
Leaders are born, not made.
Follow instead of lead or you might appear aggressive.
Intuition cannot be trusted if it goes against these strong suggestions.
The suggested result? Happiness can be found when you check these boxes set out for you by society. Well my friends, as many of you know by now, it’s all BS! ~BELIEF SYSTEM. We can truly affect our happiness in a positive way by going inward and listening to what truly calls to us rather than following a prescribed path set out by people in powerful positions, the media, and The truth of this washed over me when I finally decided to take my life into my own hands and make some hard choices. {at the end, it washed over me like a 20 ft. wave, disorienting at first, and then as the violent initial whoosh was over, I started to find my buoyancy and rhythm in the water. The motto I adopted over the last 10 years was, “you can’t push the river.” And wow, that has been one of my biggest challenges. I want to highlight something here that may seem obvious and fundamental, but it’s so important I don’t want to skip over it. Saying something is one thing. It may mean you understand or can intellectualize a concept. It is the awareness phase, but not necessarily the integration/implication phase, and it can last a long time without being put into practice. I’ve always said I’m a slow processor (did that support that reality?). I’ve been one of those who thought about a conversation later and wished I’d said a hundred different things that reflected how I really felt but couldn’t think of in the moment, or just had to sit with something for days or weeks before my true feelings about it came to the surface. Though I’m not lightening fast now to come to that place of assurance in myself to say the “right” thing, I have improved significantly. Being connected to my heart is what made the difference.
Through the decades, I tried to dissociate from cultural expectations while keeping my pinky toe in mainstream society. I moved away from home and family, I decided not to have kids, and I didn’t have a TV from ages 30-45. I received a bachelor’s degree because that was a box I thought I had to check, and I worked as an interior designer in a small Central Texas town. I married an independent thinker who showed me a different way to live, pioneering land, designing and building my own spaces, and communing with nature daily. We had no running water for years. We lived in an 8x10 shack in the woods, and later a school bus we converted ourselves. It was a life of freedom, but it was difficult to balance it while also trying to remain in the construct. I felt torn between two very different lives. We started our own business and eventually I quit the 9-5. But I still felt lost in a life that didn’t seem to be mine.
What I really wanted was a home I could design myself and share with my family and friends. I had a love of bringing people together, beautifying, cooking, and entertaining. Making moments was what drove me -creating a safe, loving home space to share. But my internally creative husband didn’t share my vision, and it became a wedge between us. I finally forced the issue when I could pay for it myself, and he relinquished his hold on keeping the land mostly undeveloped. So I did it. I built my dream home. But ultimately, there was still something I couldn’t reconcile within me. I wasn’t listening to my heart when it came to my needs and desires. If I had, I would have known that it wasn’t worth pushing my agenda on someone who was so opposed. We grew more and more distant, and weren’t able to communicate in a healthy way. As with most things in life, there is a lot more to that story, but we’ll touch on those later.
After 20 years of marriage, I finally decided that wasn’t how I wanted to live in partnership and we divorced. It was about as conscious a decoupling as it could have been, because we both agreed we needed to move on and would be better as friends. We’ve both bloomed since then and remain close and supportive of each other.
—-I had navigated some of my programming, but I’d done it by hitching my wagon to someone else’s dream.
In my marriage, I had to put my desires on the back burner. I was living an alternative lifestyle in nature, close to the land, and that part fed my soul. But we were living very small, and I wanted a home that reflected who I was, and to share it with my friends and family. My partner was not on board, and this dissonance caused years of suffering. He finally acquiesced when I could afford to do it on my own, so I built my house. I did get to share it for a few years with my tribe, but mostly, he didn’t participate. I didn’t plan on that part, and it hurt. I wanted my partner to feel the same way I did about the parts of our lifestyle that I was contributing with my dreams. Our lack of a shared connection expressed itself in me overindulging in food and alcohol as an escape. My life looked like I wanted it to on the outside, but inside I was sad that my partnership was the sacrifice for my own dreams. The house was beautiful, but the foundation was shaky.
In addition to our dynamic, I still allowed the mind chatter to scold me about not meeting society’s expectations. And on top of that, I was at a standstill, frozen by a lack of motivation and getting further from myself. I felt like I had no other choice, so I removed some obvious boulders and distractions from my life, and really started listening to that inner voice.