Remember the first time we arrived in this world...
Between the ages of 0 and three...
We experienced the purest emotions: We smiled when we felt love and happy, we cried out when something bothered and/or discomforted us, we sought love and attention from our parents and caregivers when we felt like or needed. We grew and thrived freely, like resilient little trees that yearned for sunlight no matter what.
We carried in our human plane and its DNA all the materials needed and were ready for a world full of wonderful exploration and adventures...
Between the ages of three and five...
Our world was a canvas of wonder, a place where fairies danced, heroes triumphed. We conversed with animals, discerning tales in the exuberant barks of dogs, and empathized with the silent melancholy of an unwatered plant.
As we stirred from slumber each morning, the sunlight graced our faces with gentle kisses, nourishing our bodies and souls. Throughout the day, we wandered as if amidst billowing clouds, our feet barely skimming the earth in a dance of pure elation.
As night descended, we found ourselves enveloped in a celestial embrace, merging with the myriad of stars or basking in the moon's silver luminescence. The sparkling firmament became our sanctuary, a place where we dwelt in unity, forever interconnected in the vast expanse of the universe.
We lived in a world where potentials and possibilities stretched into infinity, and we became what our imagination brought us to...
Then...
At the age of six or seven when we began to learn about the world through our interactions with neighboring friends, classmates, and teachers. We started to realize that our friends didn't always feel, think, express, or act coherently the same way we did. Differences - or similarities - were often enough for our friends to include or exclude us, or even forbid us from entering their worlds.
At school and in classes, we began learning about the world based on standardized textbooks. Our unique abilities were assessed by a standardized testing system, which in fact only measured how well we could repeat what had already been written or taught. Our teachers began to compare us with others and treat us differently based on our school performance and their perceptions of us as good or mischievous students...
Our parents and influential family members started comparing us to our siblings and friends, using expectations, various forms of punishment, and harsh words in an attempt to guide us.
We were taught to conform to societal expectations of a "nice person," and expressing our emotions freely was deemed vulnerable, shameful, and bad. We were warned that being truthful about ourselves would put us at a disadvantage.
This led us to tell lies, feel hurt, shame, sadness, lack confidence, and experience low self-esteem. We became afraid of making mistakes and being wrong.
As teenagers, entering our final years of high school...
We viewed our passions and dreams through the shattered aspirations of our parents and caregivers. Since they couldn't achieve their dreams, we felt compelled to do so.
We began to feel lost - lost inspiration, lost awareness about our own mission in life, and lost in direction - but we tried to live up to our parents/caregivers' expectation...
As our social circle expanded, we left our childhood behind, venturing into independent life and encountering our first love. Here, we often found ourselves repeating our parents' views on relationships, sometimes unconsciously reliving the wounds we witnessed in our parents or those who influenced us during childhood.
Then as we become adults...
We found ourselves chasing society's definition of success, pursuing high income, social and political status, luxurious possessions, and fancy vacations. In our quest to appear "successful," we immersed ourselves in social clubs and friend groups, hoping to showcase our achievements.
Yet, the more we strived, the emptier we felt. We were disconnected from ourselves while satisfaction eluded us, and weariness set in. Time for ourselves became a rare luxury, overshadowed by overwhelming responsibilities that brought chronic stress and a deep sense of disconnection. We spiraled into a state of depression, feeling increasingly detached from our true selves and, ultimately, from our closest family and loved ones.
Desperate to regain a sense of connection, we tried various approaches, only to discover that our efforts seemed to push us further away from the love and passion we once held dear...
This is the moment when the crisis of "Self" or "I" begins.
The crisis of "Self" begins to trigger multiple crises between us and those people or things whose presence and roles in our lives have always been intertwined with our "I".
The first crises often occur with those with whom we have the closest interactions, for instance, our family members, parents, spouses, and children. Then come issues related to jobs, friends, and social circles. We witness chaos in the world before our eyes without recognizing that, in fact, it all reflects the turmoil within us to varying degrees.
In the midst of multiple crises, we experience the domino effect of collapses. Many of the beliefs we have held, thinking they are ours and permanent, that they represent the ultimate truth, that they are real, begin to depart and disentangle. Society refers to this as the "mid-life crisis."
No, we do not need to wait until our mid-life to go through crisis!
In fact, this life crisis is not a linear path that is similar for everyone. Given our uniqueness, many of us have faced various forms and degrees of crises at earlier ages.
Exclusion by peers and harsh punishment have caused many children to retreat into their own isolated worlds as a means of self-preservation and protection.
Similarly, high parental expectations, coupled with a deficit in expressions of love and mutual understanding, have driven numerous teenagers toward various levels of depression and/or addiction.
Feelings of guilt and shame, excessive responsibility, and an absence of healthy self-expression, self-love, and self-care have plunged many adults into profound stress and anxiety in their daily lives. Moreover, individuals who were diagnosed with "anxiety disorder" and subsequently mislabeled as paranoid have faced further social exclusion. In reality, these individuals often simply lack the knowledge and skills to manage their stress effectively.
The chronic confusion of, and lack of coherence between the mind, thinking, heart, emotions, and body, action along with their prolonged lack of proper care, have turned into chronic diseases and even deadly cancers.
We fall into the bottomless pit of pain, fear, guilt, shame, and grief... Only from this depth do we begin to ask, "What has happened?" "What is it for?" "What must I do to change/transform the situation?"
All these questions lead us back to the ultimate inquiry of "I": "Who am I?" "What do happiness and satisfaction truly mean to ME?" "Since when have I been disconnected from my own self?" and "What can I do to reconnect with it?"
We begin to take full responsibility for our lives,
We begin to learn how to un-learn, un-do, un-mask all the false "I"s that have expressed through multiple false "I AM"s, which we have constructed through the eyes of "Other" since the ages of 6 or 7.
And once again, our souls begin to guide us on a path of tremendous evolution—a unique journey that our souls have written specifically for us, a path we would have embarked upon long ago, between the ages of 0 and five.
Dang Bao Nguyet
