Putting Your Estranged Self Back Together
Out of Touch with Your Self
When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.
Estranged Self
Estrangement is the painful experience of being separated from someone or something that you once loved. Whatever happened to cause the separation, estrangement from those you loved and cared for can be a painful experience.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh's quotation is about your estranged self.
When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.
When you are estranged from some part of your own self, the pain can be even greater. Your self is happiest when it is whole. When you are estranged within yourself, you have lost touch with some part of you that you valued. When you are odds with yourself, you feel estranged from who you were.
Self-estrangement can happen when you realize that your hopes and aspirations got waylaid. The part of you that was eager to do something got sidetracked. You lost touch with yourself. And in the process, you became what you do not love.
Self-estrangement can also result from selling out. Selling out means you compromise your integrity to get something you want.
Maybe you got involved with doing something that violates your ethical beliefs.
Maybe you made a lot of money by taking advantage of people who trusted you.
Maybe you abandoned the career you loved to take a job selling something that you don't value.
Maybe you cheated on your marriage and violated your vows of fidelity.
Maybe you sold out when you took a job doing something you disapprove of with people whose ethics you despise.
Reconnecting Your Fragmented Self
How do you reconnect the fragmented parts of yourself?
The first realization is that you are not a human version of Humpty Dumpty,
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again
Humpty Dumpty was an egg. Broken eggs can't be put back together. But you can put your estranged self back together by telling the truth to yourself about your life and deciding who you choose to be.
This is part of the Amazon description of the 50th anniversary edition of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's book, Gift from the Sea.
"In this inimitable, beloved classic, graceful, lucid and lyrical Anne Morrow Lindbergh shares her meditations on youth and age; love and marriage; peace, solitude and contentment as she set them down during a brief vacation by the sea..."
[Original Post September 7, 2014]