How much do we know about ourselves? How many our lies do we believe in? We live in Woody Allen’s world, where solutions to all our problems and dilemmas are expected to be solved on the couch of somebody we paying a lot of money for listening how big fricks we are… The advantage of therapist is the fact that he can help us to reach the things we hide, afraid of or not aware of.
But…
Some things cannot be cracked right away. They need a challenge. They need a conflict. You need to go out from the usual and step into your dream, hell or… take a leap to the unknown. To know yourself better, to see your own truth and to confront beloved lies, you need a situation, because you cannot talk about everything and you cannot shout everything out and you cannot analyze everything in a calm and logic manner.
My last big situation was a ship to Antarctica.
On this ship I sometimes had an impression that I was on the other side of the mirror… It turned out that I loved many things which I previously hadn’t liked. People loved many of my traits which previously I had thought they had hated in me.
I thought that I would be seasick – it turned out that when my bed is a cradle, I sleep better and have more beautiful dreams. I thought that I would have to ‘survive’ this journey – it turned out that I lived every second of it. I expected that being an only Ukrainian on a Russian ship will be… complicated. Yet, I don’t remember when was the last time I got so much attention and care….from the staff – that means Russians.
Just before setting off to Antarctica, I wrote a text about how people TRYING TO CHANGE ME ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO COPURS. Among other reasons why I notice it so much , because color is essence of who and what I am. How do I see myself. When I am without colors, I feel naked.
My beliefs that colors make a part of my DNA are enhanced by the fact that they are a frequent topic of first conversation, making it easy to chat me up. On the ship I was in a situation when every day, actually several times a day, I heard from many people, often the same ones: ‘I like you being so colorful. So many colors! You are like a butterfly among white and black…’ I was considered not only the most colorful person on this cruise, but probably the most colorful person they have ever met – excluding Vivian Westwood. Anyone who saw me couldn’t resist saying: ‘I have a few photos of you – you are easy to find – a green dot on the picture. I always know where you are, I just need to see a colorful spot on the horizon and I know that it’s you.’
Me and my colors. It was the most distinctive element of me. Without my colors I feel weird. Various people often ask me why I like green. Or where does my selection of colors come from. Sometimes I made up a story that green in Polynesia is a color of love and I am very emotional. That I love spring and spring is green. That I love Izmałkowa Consulting and the whole company is green. That it employs only people whom green suits well (not quite a joke).
The truth is that I DON’T KNOW WHY I LIKE IT. I just like it.
The same reason why I like avocado, hot bath or tulips. I just like it
Just like one REALLY failed experiment of a hairdresser convinced me that I will love to be a brunett – dressing myself all black makes me feel that I forgot something from home, changed clothes or had a really nasty mood (as my friends and co-workers suggest when they see me in this non-color).
My personal symbols of colorfulness are my bracelets from Panama, given to me by Cuna people. Several meters on my hand, a bit more on my leg… I love them. I have them for 2 years… Some people liked them, some thought that it was an absurd to wear them all the time. All the TIME. They had some point. My bracelets don’t always go well with my clothes. They often don’t match them at all. Yet, when I had to take them off for two weeks, because my leg was swollen and my bracelets pinched me, I felt like they took away a piece of me. I felt uncomfortable when I looked at white, untanned stripe on my leg. So, when I put them back, I sighed with relief. Yeah, we’re back together.
I feel naked in black clothes, because colors are a part of my personality. There’s no other and better explanation.
I think that everybody has an inseparable thing which defines them.
On a ship – with my colors. Everything was great until the captain’s dinner… I wasn’t ready for this, I didn’t have a dress and the dress code didn’t include the usual Antarctica-hippie style. The only thing, in which I didn’t look like I am going to SPA or gym in a minute, was a black blouse and a pair of clean, black leggings.
‘Why are you so late for the dinner?’
15 minutes before the dinner I looked at the tiny mirror in the bathroom and saw NOT ME. I stopped being hungry. But it was the last dinner… I desperately started looking for anything colorful. A scarf, incredibly yellow scarf.
‘Julia, are you sick?’
‘No.’
‘Do you have a sore throat?’
‘No.’
‘Are you cold?’
‘No.’
‘So why are you so wrapped up at this dinner?’
I think that this question surprised me, because I answered automatically:
‘I just needed some color… Otherwise I wouldn’t feel like myself.’
“YOU ARE WAY MORE THAN YOUR COLORS”
It not about the copurs its about the attiture – that I was telling so often to the clients about Izmalkowa consulting. I gues.. I should have told it to myself too.
People talk about my colors so frequently, that I think they see me only because of them. They talk so frequently about my journeys, that I wonder if they consider me as an interesting person when I stop travelling. They love stories from my work so much, that I really wonder if they still recognize them as interesting when I would make… a quantitative research (just a joke – I do believe that quantitative research can be interesting).
I haven’t realized that I had built my image around things I do, clothes I wear or places I visit – this image is so strong that I am afraid any loss of it will make a less of me…
So far, I don’t know who or what exactly am I, but… I am something more than my colors… than my work. Than my travels. Than my stories.
I know that each of us is more than he thinks of himself and a way more than others think of him… You need a lot of situations to see it for yourself as well as openness and not narrowing yourself to your own definition.
I am a way more than colors, travels and work… What about you? And you are more than…?
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