I am not centered

Affirmations for imperfect people

I am not centered

I’m more like
Jackson Pollack and Pablo Picasso made a mural together
And that mural had a baby with Van Gogh’s missing ear

I’m not centered

More like
A potted pothos in a dark room
Straining for sunbeams
That leak through a gap
in the velvety curtains

I’m not centered

More like the sun's
Sloppy explosions
Burning out
And reigniting
In perpetuity. 

I’m not centered

More like the wind
Playing tag with butterflies
Laughing its way up the Eiffel Tower
And tickling anyone with hair
worn loose around the shoulders.

I’m not centered

More like a sphere 
With infinite diameter
Whose edges both exist and don’t
And within whom no single point
could possibly be
the center

I’m not centered.
Thank god
for that. 

---

The spark

This poem was inspired by Bill Blaine-Wallace, an organizer with SNCC in the 60s, a mentor during my college years, and a very wise human. He was the first one I ever heard say “What’s so great about being centered?” Those words have stuck with me for 10 years and counting.

Director’s cut

This didn’t fit in the flow of the poem but I still like it:

I’m not centered

More like a corner of the forest
Unkempt
Tangled
Serene

Another angle:

Not everything needs to be about healing, betterment, growth, and evolution. Healing is also letting yourself just live…. Being present for the smallest moments, the tiny interactions that make you feel human, the micro-experiences of the day to day that make you feel alive…. Hugging longer, staying longer, lingering in moments that feel whole. The obsession with growth and healing often keeps us from actually living, when living fully is the whole entire point. May we remember this when "healing" feels like it's becoming a barrier and a point of stress instead of an opening to fully living your life.
- Lisa Olivera

Peace?

“I don’t believe that this idea of a perfect state of peace is required.”
— Katie Kraushaar

Final thoughts

There’s nothing wrong with being centered or at peace. But when we cling to centeredness as a destination and think there’s a problem when we deviate from that state, it sets us up for quite a bit of disappointment. States of mind are not permanent. Sometimes it feels like the world of self help thinks they should be, and that we’re unsuccessful unless we are permanently peaceful, happy, and centered.

Can we instead be explorers experiencing all that this life has to offer, including being off-center sometimes?

I had a week or so recently when an emotion would come up and I would ask “who is feeling that way?” Stepping into that question opened up space around the emotion, so I could experience it while remembering there was so much more to the story. Who is experiencing this experience?

When I mentioned interacting with my partner a few weeks back and recognizing my emotions had nothing to do with him, that insight was a direct result of this line of inquiry.

Oddly enough, watching myself be off-center in that moment without judging it as a bad thing led me to a state some would describe as centered. There was no need to change the one who was off-center. Both centered and off-center could be experienced simultaneously. And from that place, what could have turned into an evening of emotional reactivity settled into something closer to equanimity.

May you find joy in being a little askew.

With care,

Olivia