Simply Live.
Marriage, career, motherhood – every box ticked, and still the verdict says failure. Until she claims the hardest permission of all.
Every checkbox on the list got ticked, and the list just wrote a new line. Bella walks her own sequence honestly – marriage as a woman's fulfillment, then career as fulfillment, then both at once, then the company closes and the verdict arrives on cue: failure, doing something wrong. The treadmill doesn't care which box you're on; it only cares that you keep running.
Her answer isn't a better plan. It's half an hour on the balcony with a coffee and the warm wind, without the thought that someone is meanwhile getting ahead. Being Whole practices exactly this direction of travel: not adding another achievement to become someone, but sitting down inside what is already there. You're so busy becoming someone, she writes, that you forget to simply be.
The hardest permission on this way isn't a bold leap. It's the ordinary one: to simply live.
And you know what's the hardest thing in life? It sounds banal, but… simply living.
I remember how badly I wanted to get married back at university. It seemed to me that this was what a woman's fulfillment was.
Then the focus shifted to work. Instagram back then was wall-to-wall successful success, and I too wanted to become "someone". Though who exactly, to be honest, I still don't know. 😂
Then, by some miracle, I managed to fulfill myself in work. First I became a recruiter. After 10 years of working as a personal assistant, that was a huge step forward. Then I became an HR manager. Well, that's it, I think – there it is, fulfillment!
But there was still one more checkbox: get married. I did.
Then I got pregnant.
And you know what happened?
The company was closed down. I went on maternity leave.
And so: as a wife I'm fulfilled, it seems. As a mum too. But the career is gone.
So what does that make me? A failure?
I must be doing something wrong…
And it goes on like this all the time. If there's success at work, it feels like you urgently need to make it in family life too. If everything is good in the family, it starts to feel like it's time to build a career. If by some miracle both worked out: then you absolutely must find a hobby. Better two. Learn languages. Do sports. Read books. Meditate. Develop yourself.
And don't forget, all the while, to constantly compare yourself with others and devalue everything you already have.
And so you spend your whole life running somewhere. Searching for yourself. Searching for fulfillment. Searching for a new hobby. And life… passes by.
Because you're so busy becoming someone that you forget to simply be.
To simply sit on the balcony. Pour yourself a coffee. Or a glass of wine. Look around. Feel the warm wind. And for at least half an hour not think that you're wasting time. That you could be doing something useful right now. That someone, in that half hour, has already become more successful than you. To simply live.
It seems to me that amid all this noise about success, achievements and endless fulfillment, the hardest thing is to give yourself permission to simply live.
Thank you for reading.
If her words reached somewhere mine don't – good. That's what this blog is for. Take what fits and leave the rest.
– Jan