catharine What image comes to mind the most, for you, when you get to know a person?
Is it an onion? Are we onions (like Shrek says)?
Are we diamonds- with many facets?
Oceans, with levels?
Are we neutrons or atomic particles of some kind with multiple magnetic fields surrounding us, constantly shifting boundaries, constantly altering dynamics? An elaborate set of dynamic Venn Diagrams, each field defined by its own algorithm with specifics that vary based on the content, context, and distance of things?
Is who we are something constantly, and quietly, changing?
I like that last image, and the diamond one, I think, because… “digging” is kind of a negating stance, in its way, to me. Like. The idea that the surface isn’t real, the surface is fake- that the “real person” is underneath- this has judgment attached to the layers.
But what about boundaries? Spheres, and fields? that are constantly shifting: “This is how I act in this situation” “This is how I act in relation to this other person/situation/’element’/’molecule’ when I encounter it” “This is how I dance” “This is how I repel” “This is how I relate” “This is how I maintain my structural integrity DESPITE this pull to break, that pull to break, that pull to break..”
—
?
So many of the things we think of as “coping mechanisms” or “surface” are the things that, sometimes rather literally, keep us from breaking apart.
Perhaps we are more than the sum of our layers?
