Wellness Calendar: Thursday 11 September

The metaphorical playdough

Imagine you have a pot of playdough in front of you. As you take it out of its tub and place it on the table, everything about it is reassuring to you: the colour, the smell, the texture. The playdough is you; you are the playdough.

After gently kneading the putty-like substance for some time, you start to notice something unusual about your playdough. It isn’t completely uniform. There are tiny specks of foreign colours once hidden in the deep depth of the dough that have inexplicably come to the surface. Now that you have a focused eye, you also notice other alien bits and bobs, such as gristle and fossilised matter. And now, when you come to think of it, your playdough colour isn’t entirely even; there are some patches that are darker or lighter than others.

What are you going to do with this knowledge? What, if anything, are you going to do with your playdough? Do you accept or ignore what you have just seen and carry on as before? Do you take the time to work out what’s going on, what the unaccountable objects and miscolouring are and what they are doing? If you know some of these bits don’t belong to you, or aren’t helpful to you, do you expel them?

Part of being empowered is exploring yourself with a view to understanding yourself. In this way you get to choose what you are and what you are not.

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