Are You Living Someone Else's Life?

And just who is this "someone"?--and other Beauty at Work Salon topics

“I’m living someone else’s life.”

This line came up in a Beauty Salon conversation yesterday, when a smart, wise, open woman talked about an unsatisfying drive for order, to-do lists and massive productivity at her job. She saw something that led to a this-is-bullshit realization. “I’m living someone else’s life.”

Hearing this phrase struck me with a new kind of freshness and force. Its meaning went beyond the distinction of: “what I think I should do/want” vs “what I really want” (or keeps tapping for attention); instead, I saw this other life as the ego/self. This other life is rooted in the made-up identity that exists in a state of perpetual survival: defending, protecting, striving, proving… and driving us up the fucking wall. It feels like us, but it isn’t. Experiencing life from the engine of insecure thought is going to prickle and hurt, drain and paralyze. My identity likes to blare a campaign to the tune of “harder” “faster” “don’t fall behind” “who do you think you are?” “just handle it.” Not. Fun.

But if I can continue to see these habitual thoughts as “someone else’s”—untrue, not who I am or what life is, just the ego/self trying to stay alive—then I can stare down these mind states with curiosity, and turn toward a different kind of attending to life. I can move away from living “someone else’s life,” and toward the vibrancy of life.

Let’s lop three words off our original sentence: “I’m living.” That’s more like it.

 And still, I slipped into “someone else’s life” many times today

My identity is a muscly relentless thing, and she likes to hijack my “living” experience. For years I thought she was real, instead of a habitual weather system of thought that streamed in, seeking front page news coverage. Boy, did I give it to her! Even now, when I see the illusion of her (life is not made up of those thoughts), I still fall for her song like Ulysses going for the Sirens. Lately she’s been demanding that I get all these things done before some still-undefined date pre-Christmas. The reaction to this kind of task-driving is the desire to lay on the couch and withdraw, away from Life’s Phantom Clock tick-tocking in my ear,  attempting to scare me straight with the scarcity of time.

And then, and then — this little fingerling of an idea glimmered. What if I don’t have to be in a hurry? Does it matter if I don’t finish my book proposal by Dec 31, or reflect back on my year and plan first quarter of Jan by Dec 22, 5 pm? Who says that putting my head down and furiously cranking is going to get me “there” any sooner? (Where do I want to be, anyway? Yes, I have projects and goals but still…) So I imagined what it might be like if I gave myself shitload of time to exist with day after day, and not feel the survivalism of not-enough-ness.

This doesn’t negate deadlines and agreements, it just blows up my conditioned thinking around Time, Getting Things Done, and Working Hard Enough (to the bone dammit!) for My Keep.

It feels so radical, so naughty!, to just take my time with life, and trustethat I will get done what I really want to get done, because so far I have always completed the tasks/projects/etc that really mean something to me. What if I wrote my book proposal from a plenty-of-time space/state of mind?

What if you gave yourself all the time in the world because—whose to say that’s not what we really have? All the time in the world.

If you like these conversations, join Beauty at Work.

A group of cool and curious people are going to explore a new way of being with this thing we call Work. Starting January 5, we’ll meet on Zoom once a week to let out ruffled wings and consider ideas like: Why do we ask our job to deliver so much of our happiness, self-worth, and life purpose? How else can we define “work”? What the hell does beauty have to do with work anyway? Beauty is for sculptors and ballet dancers! I’m sure there will be surprises and insights, some laughs. 

We might also talk about how, in the middle of a workday, you go to the sink to fill up a water glass, feeling a wee existential funk in your craw, and then gaze lovingly at this little glass container with fresh oregano from your garden. Delighted because it’s so delicate and pretty, and something you think of in other homes where people have this effortless country-decor aesthetic that’s just not in you. But here you are, throwin’ it it down, Just Like That, without a second thought.