Being in process is the “finding myself” of the 21st Century. Being in process, getting into the process, figuring out the process, following through on the process, seeing it for what it is, just letting it….Oh good grief! Time to process the processing of your process elsewhere, please.
The brain needs distance from events and feelings and the moment in order to make meaning of things, analyze, and get a handle on what’s happened. If you have enough distance to be able to recognize that you’re processing things, that’s fabulous. Like ocean waves sometimes we can get perspective from the tip-top, see what’s around us, what we’re in, where we’re headed, and then we slide down to be in it some more. This alternating perspective and depth is organic and healthy and keeps us sane. We need the breaks from all the being and we need to plunge back in again.
But if we’re constantly above it analyzing, making meaning out of it, sorting and figuring and putting things into their assorted piles, then we’re not actually processing. It’s kinda like when someone says they are kind or friendly or a good person. If you have to say it then you aren’t it. If you are it then you don’t even think to say it because it’s just the way things are. If you’re actually in process, then you may be aware that things are happening, you may actually come up for air and be able to see the process in several of its components and this can give you the necessary information to consciously choose how you’re going to go forward. It helps with the decision making process. But then you need to get down in it again. Feel and respond and experience and act and be the process, don’t do the process.
We’re here to live, not analyze the living. Put down the self-help book about your process and go dive into it. It’s messy and painful and terrific and transformative and you will not get anything out of it until you put yourself in it.