Robert describes living for others' approval and asks his wife Susan for quiet, curious patience to help him access deeper parts of himself. He names the gap between his public image and inner self, and Susan responds with sustained genuine interest.
I have lived my life. In fact, I wrote a poem about myself in college, before you and I were close friends, 40 some years ago. And it was, it went something like, tell me, my friend, how does it feel to be an ever changing image of what you think they want to see? And that's a big, big part of how I've lived my life is looking in the mirror of others. And if they approve, I continue to act that way and modifying what I do to get that approval way, way back in my life. And so it's very difficult for me to move from that to my being the primary focus. It's just so automatic for me to look outside, very hard to move inside.
So that awareness is the beginning, peak awareness, the awareness that you're caught in attempting to define yourself as being a person that's responsive to whatever the outside needs. And the awareness says, no, I'm someone else. I'm really someone else. So who is that? Who are you in there? What do you need? What is most important to you?
Then I feel like I developed a set of ideas about that. I'm a nice person, I'm honest, I work hard. I have certain images of myself when you ask me that question, but they still feel locked into images that are acceptable.
Okay, so you have these images which many of them are true in my experience of you, you are that person. The question still remains, what do you want and need beyond those images? What's the priority of your life beyond those images? How do you want me to respond to you? How do you want those that love you the most to best make contact with you?
I would love it if I had the courage more. And what I want from you, what I want from Susan, my wife, is to kind of, kind of take, you know, the curtains aside of those things which to some degree they're image and also, yes, they're true. And to say, okay, there's another layer in there and that layer wants to be seen, wants patience, wants nurturing in a quiet way, in a way that just allows space and time for whatever wants to come up with no need to have activity or movement or performance and just stays quiet and stays with me.
So a quiet, curious patience of what wants to emerge in there. Who are you?
I'm not entirely sure and I'm not.
Sustaining the real interest, the genuine interest, that's what you really want. So for you to retain this is what I want to ask for from you, Robert, is what I want to ask for from you, Susan. I want a quiet, curious patience, an inquiry of tell me who you are with no agenda beyond that.
Yes.
And just sense how that feels, to just be in that asking state and that representing you in the most dictified way.
Uncomfortable. To have the attention on me is uncomfortable.
And.
And I'm rooting for myself to get comfortable. I really am. I don't see that I can really, really be fulfilled without it. And I'm uncomfortable.
And the uncomfortable is the old image and ego of constantly being a giver and the attention being on the outside, having to go through being disoriented. And it is uncomfortable because it's not in control anymore.
That's right.
So I think highlighting the fact this is the truth, the deepest truth for me and this discomfort is no longer going to control my life, or is.
It.
Becomes a great inquiry and a support for you.
