"Someone asked Rumi, 'Who are you?'
And he replied, 'I am in astounding lucid confusion! If you label me and define me, you will starve yourself of yourself. I am your own voice, echoing off the walls of God!'”
Sometimes, I love to pick a random notebook from my ever growing stack of journals. A paper trail of my inner chaos, revelations, and questionable late-night wisdom. Re-reading old entries used to make me cringe. But lately, I’ve been returning to them with love and reverence for the version of me who was writing, processing, grieving, celebrating, and finding joy in the little things.
When heaviness visits me, I often turn to those pages for guidance. That’s where I’ve learned to alchemize my pain into wisdom. One of those entries holds a memory of discovering a line by Rumi. Reading it felt like suddenly remembering something I had forgotten, something sacred that was hiding in plain sight.
"If you label me and define me, you rob yourself of yourself.”
The more I try to define myself, the further I feel from who I really am.
That moment cracked something open in me. I suppose you could say I analyzed the words, but it felt more like they gave me permission to simply be. To not cling so tightly to definitions or expectations.
Because the truth is, when I label myself as one thing and not the other, I rob myself of the opportunity to grow beyond that label. It becomes a self-imposed prison. We live in a world that often sees not knowing who you are as a weakness. But what if it’s not?
The only thing I know for sure about myself is that I am a mosaic of being.
If you don’t know who you are or what you want to do with your life. Good. That means you’re free. That means you haven’t boxed yourself in. Instead of seeing the “I don’t know” as something to be ashamed of, see it as sacred. See it as space. See it as possibility. (Complete side note, but this post pairs best with “Wide Open Spaces” by The Chicks. Volume up. Windows down.)
sheeee neeeeds wide ooopen spacessss room to make her big mistakes
There is comfort in the I don’t know.
When we define ourselves too rigidly, we rob ourselves of experiences we might have had otherwise. We miss out on becoming versions of ourselves we never dreamed possible.
So please, don’t rob yourself of yourself by putting yourself in a box.
Don’t rob others of their expansion by doing the same to them.
Let yourself experience true freedom by experiencing many things, without attaching too tightly to any of them.
Seek not to define, seek to expand.
" to "know" reality you cannot stand outside it and define it: you must enter into it, be it and feel it" - Alan Watts from The Wisdom of Insecurity
stay sexy you guys xx