Times & Seasons
Not all seasons are giving seasons.
Dearest gentle reader, how faireth thee on? Haha, okay, that’s a bit extra even for me ... But seriously, I do want you to be well... how are you?
Today, I want to get candid... Not all seasons are giving seasons.
If you have interacted with my writing for sometime, then you may have come across my open criticism against LinkedIn.
Different people can interpret this dislike differently, and let me confess some of my interpretations (from the inner critic in my head):
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The truth is that, for someone who has things to be "thrilled" or "delighted" about as you'll often find in LinkedIn posts, then you who has a bias against LinkedIn can easily be termed as bitter. You are bitter because you haven't done anything with your life or accomplished anything, that's why you claim to think LinkedIn causes undue pressure. Or you could simply be a loser, you have not applied yourself to anything, that's why you are bitter.
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Look, I am cognizant that we live in a world of image maintenance and all but honestly, I have nothing to lose or appearances to maintain. I don’t have to worry about destroying any "image"... So I can be honest with you, that sometimes I have wondered whether my bias isn’t simply because for a time I have felt Iike a failure...
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However, despite what the results of my life may have been for a while... To say LinkedIn promotes a healthy culture of expectations would be a lie, because to do so would mean trivializing the experiences and feelings of the thousands of other young people who have felt underachieved due to what they see on LinkedIn.
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So, what does all this have to do with seasons and giving?
To answer that question, I would have to go back to LinkedIn for a moment.
If you have interacted with the platform enough, then you'll find that it promotes the idea of "giving" and "serving others" as one of the marks of a great person... It's how you prove to potential employers or networks that you are above the average person. If you could post as many instances of events where you were "serving", then you would be a gold standard on the LinkedIn algorithm. After all, it is a platform for image placement so as to achieve targeted career goals, no?
Well, I am not disputing the value of giving. If anything, even before the advent of any social media or LinkedIn... Giving has been at the core of societal development. Giving does enrich our individual life experiences as well, so let this not be quoted as a proponent of promoting self- centeredness.
Perhaps it's good to clarify who I am writing this for.
I am writing this article for the average early to mid- career young person... Or the campus student trying to position themselves for the best opportunities in the best international organizations... The ones who truly understand what the pressure to "stand out " amidst all this PhD LinkedIn populace feels like. I'm writing this for the early to mid- and late twenties young person trying to keep their head above the water, who by all means, in a pre- social media world would have been fine , but whose average life right now just doesn't seem to cut it in what feels like a world made of outliers , and they are the underachieved ordinary person. That's who this is for...
Now we can get back to giving yeah ...
Seasons , giving and LinkedIn...
Sometime ago, I told a mentor-ish of mine that I feel like I could finally be in what feels like the most peaceful season of my life... I am no longer in a state where I constantly identify with my problems.
To be more specific, I was responding to this mentor's WhatsApp post about "sharpening our axes", and one of the aspects of our lives he proposed we must sharpen is our relationships.
This list of things included many other things , but relationships stood out for me, and here's why...
For a long long time, I have experienced different issues in mental and emotional wellbeing. Whether it be rejection, or extreme feelings of hopelessness, low self-esteem or envy from comparing myself with others and feeling I fell short; feeling extremely sad and/or lonely; or working very well in seasons of burst of good energy then fell into a self destructive state and undid all my good efforts... I almost always seemed to be in polar states of being.
Whether it was that time I had unpremeditated drunk sex with my 27- years old neighbor who turned out to have been someone’s baby daddy (😂🙀🙀🙀) or a week of binge smoking weed and Netflix ... Or just feeling suicidal ... Whether it be imposter syndrome or self-sabotage cycles I just felt I couldn’t overcome ... There was always a running problem in my life.
I have self diagnosed with all sorts of mental health disorders, from believing I could have been bipolar for a time, to being convinced I had a dissociative personality disorder.
Haha, this may sound extreme for some, but I know there is someone out there who understands exactly what I mean ... And perhaps that’s the person I’m writing for, and that’s okay .…
So, anyhow, back to this mentor and their WhatsApp status ...
I replied to them and told them that against the list of things he'd posted about sharpening our axes, my most lacking tool was relationships.
I explained that I was at peace but also perhaps most separated, because I have almost zero relationships...
Why?
In the past, due to the kind of mental troubles I've had, my relationships existed in a dynamic of me always being the troubled person in the relationship. Whether it was normal friends, or mentors I sought out to help me, the dynamic of our relationship was that, at any given moment, there was a dysfunction in my life that made up the topic of our conversation... I was always pessimistic, or in trouble, or stressed, or depressed, or had made a stupid decision (self- sabotaged) in some way, and our engagement was me confessing how bad I felt or how much I felt I hated myself... I was always a tornado of problems or some kind of drama ...
By the grace of God, my life is a bit more silent now ... A bit less dramatic ... My soul is a bit more balanced... A bit settled now ...
The result though? ... I no longer have much to discuss with people... At least I can't say this is something I've figured out yet ... Because the dynamic that sustained most of my conversations with people in the past no longer exists... So what becomes of my relationships?
There is crickets😂 ... There's a lot of silence, because what do we talk about? I am not trying to kill myself or irresponsibly sleeping with a neighbor then regretting and numbing by smoking weed and looking for harder drugs unsuccessfully... It's not all that chaotic in my life anymore... Thank God!
It's still loads of crickets in my relationships though ... Not that I find that a problem... But it's hard not to see the silence there when I encounter information like , "Oh ... Your network is your net worth" and all that ...
So, anyhow, to end this thing ... This mentor -person advised that now I should get out of my comfort zone and give and give and give like my life depended on it ...
And that all made sense ... But I couldn't help feeling like it was a LinkedIn kind of pressure all over again ...
It doesn't help that I love knowledge, so I'm always reading some book or watching some video ... And one such video I've come across is this podcast called , "Healed Girl Era" ... The idea in this podcast is that we will not always be in a place of healing, we can get to a season where what we have are scars ... And I think I have wondered whether I shouldn't be in my "healed era" by now ...
Anyhow, this mentor person isn't strictly a mentor I walk with closely, it's a person who's work and life I admire from a distance
I decided to seek the opinion of my real mentor, who I walk with more closely and have even prayed with several times ... And she said something that changed my life.
She said, "I would say, dedicate a season of your life to healing. Emotional, spiritual, psychological, physical and mental healing... You have been through so much trauma ... Dedicate a season of your life to healing. That's what I would say... "
It's not okay for you to do anything out of pressure... You shouldn't do anything out of a "should" space, where you feel you should give because"giving" is what's presented as the right thing to do ... If it's not freely flowing out of you, then you may not be ready... And that's okay.
In fact, it is critical that you do not rush into anything, not even to something as noble as giving ... The world will be okay without your contribution for a while ...
The last two paragraphs are me elaborating on what I heard from my mentor's message... And it's what I wanted to share in this article, with all the detour stories I've told ...
LinkedIn comes into all this because a lot of people , especially young people, do feel the pressure to be somewhere out there doing something... And again, maybe I am only writing for the 1% of non-outliers like me whose lives have been a bit too mentally chaotic ... And if that is the case, then I would be completely okay.
For the person who understands what I mean here, let me repeat what my mentor told me, "Dedicate a season of your life to healing... "
And just because you have been fairly okay for a month or four without the usual chaos and cycles you had in the past does not mean it's time for you to "get back out there".
To borrow language from one of my reads earlier this year, Woman Evolve by Sarah Jakes Roberts, perhaps what my mentor meant was , "Incubate" your new life for sometime...
You feel a bit better than you have in years ? Good ... But you may not be ready to pour out yet ...
Let your new life take root. Let your new way of thinking take root.
Take time to get used to being peaceful. Take time to get yourself used to living without too much drama or self destructive cycles.
Take time to get used to not being in a perpetual state of needing some kind of deliverance. Incubate that new life first.
How will you know whether you have "healed" enough to "get back out there"? Well, I don't know ... But maybe it'll be natural...
Course Correct is much my own restoration journey as it is my desire to help others in their own journeys... So you can rest assured I'll let y'all's know how I knew my season to "give" had come ... When I get to that state.
In the meantime... Let me encourage a soul out here ... Not every season is giving season ... And it's important you know this, and that it is okay.
As always, this is written with all my love.
Shalom,
Risper Wanja.
