by Madeleine Kando We are all at the center of our lives. From one day to the next, we create our own universe, our own ‘life’, our own memories, hopes for the future, disappointments, regrets and hopes.
Thank God for that. Can you image if we all had to make room for each other’s past? Each other’s hopes, disapppointments and regrets? There would be no room any more. That’s why we are so ‘self-centered’. It’s a matter of survival.
While I was growing up and testing out the waters of my own existence, I often experimented with the thought of being someone else. I fantasized being my best friend, Annemiek. I wondered what it would be like to have that long, reddish hair, those sexy lips, those long legs.. strutting about, turning men on wherever I appeared. I met her older sister once. She was the intellectual type, with a big chin and a cold stare. Nothing like my best friend Annemiek. But I started to ponder about how it was for Annemiek to grow up with a sister like that. In fact, as I was slowly stepping into Annemiek’s ‘life-circle’, mine started to fade into the background. I stopped being at the center of my own universe. I started to be dangerously close to Annemiek’s center.
One day I saw Annemiek walk down the street arm in arm with my boyfriend. That was the day I realized that staying at the center of my own universe was a much better deal for me. So I stopped trying to be at other people’s center. I sacrificed my curiosity and mental experimentatioin for a more down-to earth ‘self-centered’ apprpoach to life.
After all, if everybody’s life was vying for attention, it would be like an incredibly complicated mandala: circles overlapping each other ad infinitum, until the whole surface of your life-page would turn black. One circle has to remain in the forefront, and that is YOUR circle.
On the other hand, we all overlap somewhat. I overlap with my sister and brother. We have the same past, having grown up in the same family. Even our present is overlapping more than someone I never met who grew up in the African desert. This gives us the capacity to ‘empathise’, to ‘feel’ for each other. Feel each other’s happiness, sorrow.
I still wouldn’t mind circle hopping every once in a while. It sure would beat boredom. If I was my friend Janice for a day, I would wake up in the middle of 350 acres of beautiful New Hampshire countryside and realize that I knew everything about horses. My thoughts would’nt feel quite right. I wouldn’t be the worrywart that I am now, but take things as they come. (Janice is the ‘seize the day’ kind of woman).
I wouldn’t mind being at some famous person’s center for a few days, a genius like Gandhi or Einstein. My husband couldn’t say: ‘Ah, it’s you again’ when I entered the room. I would be a totally new me. Wouldn’t that be cool? If I was the famous ballet dancer Margot Fonteijn for a day I would dazzle my audience with my grace and physical prowess.
On the other hand it took me all these years to be me. Years of selecting from the myriads of choices that life dishes out to humans. And then there are centers of the universe that I never would want to be, not even for one second. If I woke up one day as Sarah Palin and I would find that my political knowledge was that of a 6th grader.. That I would believe in Creationism and that my favorite sport would be shooting wolves out of an airplane.. I think would kill myself. Maybe being me is not so bad after all. At least, that way, I don’t have to be her. leave comment here