A deep breath

Why I quit tech and became an emotional wellness coach 

(7 min read)

"We are all just walking each other home." --- RAM DASS  

That's the short version of it. 

The slightly longer version

I started a journey like most journeys, not knowing I even started one or what I was getting myself into. The destination is definitely not one I could have predicted. Like many foolish beings before me, I thought I knew how things would play out and where I was headed, but boy, did I get some unexpected twists and turns. 

This graph pretty much summarizes what happened in my life, without all the tedious details. The jest? Well, at one point, my life fell spectacularly apart. What I experienced was tremendous pressure, tremendous agony, tremendous hopelessness. But like all things, it changed. With great effort, I made it through my darkest night and at last, a new chapter awaits to be written. 

The precipice from despair to something different wasn't marked by any major instant joy. It was slow but sure, like eating spaghetti one strand at a time.   

Today I stand more connected to all living beings. I feel at times many emotions inside of me like an electric current. Yet there is an external peace to my being, the kind of peace that perhaps is the result of accepting the emotions from my experiences. I became familiar with feelings that many find unpleasant, repugnant, and unwanted. Surprisingly, as I sat with my unwanted feelings, the unbearable became less unbearable and I grew more comfortable with myself. It wasn't the version I wished others would like. It wasn't happy, positive, or understanding but it was undeniablly all the parts of me. 

The greatest gift I received from falling apart was an actual experiential understanding of what it is to feel a wider spectrum of emotions. Of course, I was familiar with the common ones.. happiness, excitement, anger, guilt, jealousy. But the truly gut-wrenching emotions like rage, despair, futility, desperation, grief, powerlessness, hopelessness, apathy, horror, injustice were concepts I only had a dictionary understanding of. 

Someone can describe what being on a roller coaster is like. However, until you experience those sensations yourself, can you truly say you know what riding a roller coaster is like? 

Somewhere in the depth of my being, I truly felt. 

Maybe from that place, I inextricably felt connected with other people because it's the commonality that every human is capable of knowing -- It's not what we fear, or what brings us joy, or what we lost, but it's those feelings themselves. That feeling of fear itself, that feeling of joyfulness itself, that feeling of loss itself.. is universally human. 

Every time I see intense emotions, I am reminded of our humanity, how exquisite and multifaceted we are. Only someone who loves knows grief. Only someone who knows oneness feels loneliness and separation. How much more beautiful can we be?

I don't know what I don't know, but I do know I want to guide others to reframe their relationship with themselves by accepting what is, finding peace with what was, and choosing differently because we are not bound by our past and the stories we keep telling ourselves whether we aware of it or not. 

In my opinion, people have to experience to learn. We don't learn life by hearing about it from others, if we did, we would have outstripped our limitations and learned from other people's mistakes as the next generation. But this is not the case. Why is that? My working theroy is that each of us has to feel it for ourselves, for it to ring true. With this realization, I can only say that each of us is here to simply experience and to feel so that we may live and learn, not for others, but for ourselves. 

This is no easy cake, but if we don't experience to feel fully, then what is there? There is simply nothing.. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that. Pun intended. With all seriousness, what's worse to me, is a life we wish we could have lived differently.

But my darling friends, you don't have to wish it to be different. You have all the power in you to do so one spaghetti strand at a time and I am here for you. 

With gratitude..