Google, "why hasn't he text me back?"

I’m writing today’s rant, wrapped up inside of my blanket, after a week of on-going illness. Maybe, that’s your invitation to get wrapped up in a blanket too and immerse yourself in this article (it's great to read with classical music in the background, here is one of my fav playlists). If you're reading in the article and want to receive more stories and poems like these straight to your inbox...

If you checked my Google search history from a few years back, you would’ve found different variations of the question: 

“why hasn’t he text me back?”

An attempt from a version of Emma to find clarity from the treasure trove of explanations Google had to offer. Not surprisingly, I never found my truth on Google, I found versions of it that I tried to apply to what I was experiencing or would go to therapy about in an attempt to rid myself of what Google had diagnosed. It was funny that I couldn’t accept his response of “that I’m just bad with my phone” (I’ll share with you my conclusion about this towards the end). But, firstly, to the theme of this story: 

Our not okay-ness, as a society, with uncertainty and discomfort

I don’t class myself as an expert on uncertainty, but the way I’ve lived my life has made me someone who’s definitely comfortable with it, or at least willing to go through the discomfort to reach the comfortable bit. 

This week, for the first time in a while, I was confronted with being really ill. Like couldn’t leave my bed, in pain, not sleeping, having to cancel and reschedule my whole week kinda ill. Today I went to the doctors, fully prepared with the notes of diagnoses I had found whilst, again, on Google. The doctors decided because of my symptoms, that it was best that we covered all basis and scheduled a few different tests across the week ahead (or maybe because of my persistent notes). Why am I telling you this? Well firstly, because I won’t be doing my Week 4 poetry reading this Sunday (I’m imagining you all with a reminder on your phone for that email), so you’ll have to wait until next Sunday, but you can catch up from Week 1 here. Secondly, I don’t want to ruin my current Substack streak of posting for 37 weeks in a row, this will be my 38th (I'm weirdly obsessed with Substack's weekly celebration emails). But also, because I think there’s something for myself and for you guys to take away from this experience. 

Whilst googling my symptoms prior to visiting the doctors, I found myself looking for something to hold onto. A reason to explain why I was feeling the way I was, so that I could, essentially, fix the pain and the feeling of not knowing exactly what was wrong. I was looking for certainty before I could actually receive it, through the awareness that only test results (unless you’re a shaman) can show when it comes to the biological functioning of our body. I thought how often we do this with ourselves, with our emotional and mental wellbeing. We want a reason to explain why we’re feeling the way we are, why we are the way we are. The uncertainty of not knowing feels too much, a label, an explanation, gives us the idea of safety. This has me questioning, is this really safety, or a false version of it in our quest for creating certainty in a situation that’s still, or by its nature, uncertain?

That’s not to say it isn’t important to do our research, gain a deeper understanding, consult with therapists and doctors, listen to podcasts, read books, whatever it is that allows us to explore and discover more about what we’re experiencing. To receive different answers. However, to me, this is a different approach to when we’re attempting to fix uncertainty or fix discomfort, something I can confidently say I’m an expert in. I spent my whole life trying to fix who I was and 'my problems', I’ve had so many therapists, coaches, read so many books, listened to so many podcasts, googled so many questions, and whilst I acquired a lot of knowledge and awareness through this process, it never satisfied this need to just find an answer. What exactly? I can’t even answer that question now, but I don't think it was really about an answer, more about being told "it's okay, you’re okay, what you're feeling is valid" even when the opposite appeared to be true. Or, "I'll support you however you need with what you're experiencing", even in the midst of a crazy shit storm.

It’s interesting as I type this to you, I don’t really know what I’m typing, I learn a lot through writing. I’ve amassed around 20 journals over the past 4 years or so (which I decided the other day to start sharing with you in a new series I’ll reveal in another newsletter), but what I’ve realised is that those journals are full of conversations with myself, reflecting on what’s been shared with me and then discerning what was for me and what wasn’t. I’ve only started to realise recently just how much I took on from others, not only professionally and personally through holding space, but also how I’d taken on everyone’s truth as The Truth, I still hear the voices arguing sometimes in my mind, that, without writing in my journals, I wouldn’t have recognised that the ‘answers’ offered by these voices, were not always my own or did not always apply to me. Whenever I’ve tried to keep the full clothing on of the advice I received outside of myself, I found it eventually would feel heavy, oversized, or would get too tight to the point I felt like I couldn’t breathe. 

This year has been the most profound in terms of the amount of clothing I’ve taken off to return to what’s really true for me. I can't answer the questions “how can we stop fixing ourselves?” or “how can I be okay with uncertainty and discomfort?” and I don’t think Google can either. What I can say is what I’ve learnt through my experience and maybe there’s a sock of that you’d like to keep in your draw. To me, starting with discovering what’s inside first, helps us navigate what appears to be outside (to me, now, they’re like the same thing, but that topic was for this poem). What I mean by this is, instead of looking for the reasons why you are the way you are, or why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling by going to someone else, or that book that sounds like it has the answer to your problems, why not go first, to yourself, and discover how you feel about it? For me that’s always been through poetry, writing and long walks in nature, maybe for you it’s something different.

The ‘formula’ I like to apply when in uncertainty or discomfort is, let myself sit in it, hear how I feel about what’s happening, then go into the world with that understanding and deepen my knowledge and awareness by interacting with books, other people, podcasts, a visit to the doctors and yes sometimes, still Google. Then, with that acquired 'outside' knowledge, I return to myself, discern what’s for me and what isn’t and act accordingly. In some cases, I realise there’s not actually an answer right now, but that's when I recognise more space is needed (a great way for life to strengthen your ability to be with discomfort and uncertainty). There’s not really a science to this, it’s more of a process that works for me. A process I’ve repeated many times with things I find more challenging, that it has now become second nature (until my self-prescribed diagnosis from Google had me planning my funeral this week). I’m back, now, in uncertainty and discomfort, waiting for my tests results, still ill, but this time I feel okay about being here and just feeling what this space is bringing up, whilst also doing what I can do to take care of my health before I receive my test results.

My theory from this ‘formula’ is that maybe, in a world full of noise, opinions and advice (even this article), at least starting and ending with yourself, is actually your best bet.

I also thought I’d end this article by coming full circle and taking you back to the opening paragraph, the mystery of “why didn’t he text me back” (I thought you’d be yearning to hear my conclusion with this specific situation). After what was, I kid you not, years, of asking every version of this question, I discovered he was in-fact, bad with his phone and had a lot present in his life that didn’t offer him the space and time to connect in a way he could or even wanted to. I also discovered, that funnily enough, I was just getting frustrated about something that I hadn’t accepted with myself because, turning the tables, years later, I tend to be the one taking my time to reply or without my phone. I’m not saying this will always be the case for you, it never really is, but I find it interesting to reflect on how I was trying to find answers that were already there, communicated to me, that if I had the awareness at the time that I do now, I would’ve been able to do a check in with myself, decipher the validity of how this felt for me and realised, yes, this feels right. That doesn’t mean it always is true, in some cases I find it just means “Emma there’s more learning for you here, so stay with it” and I’m cool with that. Either way, I sure would've saved myself a lot of going in circles, or maybe I was meant to otherwise I wouldn't be writing this article to you right now.  

I guess this has got me reflecting on something a little deeper too, how quick we are to judge or assume because we think we sense something, because Google told us or our friend gave us advice. In someway, we’re all looking through filters of our own experiences, filters that distort how we see another. I’m not sure if there’s a way we can see completely without our filters, this is why, to me, space compassion and communication are essential in supportive and nourishing relationships. Yet, I still think when we come in guns blazing with our diagnosis of another, when we look at them through our judgements, beliefs and ideas, we have no chance as a human society of remembering that we’re all actually the bloody same deep down in some weird crazy ways that I don’t think we can ever fully understand.

So what can we do instead? Again I don’t have the answers, but what works best for me, is, if someone comes into my life, I choose to stay open and trusting of them, I choose to accept them fully as who they are, open to learning about their ways, I choose to not alter who I am, but find ways I can work with them through compassion. I choose to ignore the voices of judgement, that most certainly still arise in my mind. I choose this in all of my relationships and then I can learn through the experiences that relationship brings as to whether this is someone I can trust or not. Through that awareness, we have the choice in how we  proceed.

Of course, I’m not conscious I’m doing all of this, it’s more on auto-pilot now, but I definitely and still do have to practice it in different ways through my life. Practice that, no matter how many times this way may have hurt me in the past, I refuse to let my past experiences distort how I see another or close me to life and connection, although this does feel very challenging sometimes, I remind myself that even when something doesn’t work out, even when I get hurt, I’ve learnt so much and this deepens my awareness, shifts my frequency, so I’m much more equipped to move through situations in the future, or help others experiencing something similar. 

This isn’t going to work for everyone or apply to every situation, but I’ve found in this way, I’ve become not only resilient but also soft as a human being and I find, even in the challenges, I’m at peace simply because I’m connected and participating in the full continuum of being human, I mean, isn’t that why I came to Earth in the first place?

with love,
Emma

What did you think of this rant? What did it bring up for you?