On this misty cold November sunday afternoon, I took a walk out in the fields, parallel to the motorway at first, later across open land, mostly agricultural deserts, flat to the distant hills some 200 km away.

I was thinking. Or rather: Things thought themselves, inside me, in a way different from me being thought.

One topic working itsef into a more stable clarity was self-worth. When young we tend to receive our sense of self-worth – the esteem for our worth, our self, our gracefulness – from others. Many struggles and conflicts with parents and others involve this longing for esteem and its rejection. It's only later, perhaps even late, in life that we grow into a form in which this esteem for our own worth and gracefulness arises from ourselves, no longer dependent on others. (I say "ourselves" because calling it "from inside us" would be misleading: We're not simply what's "inside the confines of our skin" but also what involves all that is outside of it.) And we may come to the point that we realize that the esteem by others is no longer essential for us to be who we are because we can bring it about from ourselves. I think this is a major aspect of what it means to have become an adult. It liberates the conflicts from their various weights.

#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten 1/x