AYE 2006
I’m back from the AYE conference this year. I’ve been going for three years now. Each year, the conference has been a little different. Each year, I have been a little different.
I am not the person I was last year. I will not be the person I am next year. This much I can say from experience. There are people who say that no-one is ever the same person twice, from moment to moment, that personality is like water, always flowing by its nature. I’m aware of my calm now, my desire to speak clearly, and my inner critic in the background examining each word for its purpose. This is who I am right now. I know I won’t be the same person in a few hours. But I can see how that person feels, and be aware of that person.
I didn’t get much from the conference this year. I was – am – sick. I’ve had a nasty flu for two weeks now. Coughing, sneezing, sore throat, and a general sense of fatigue that calls into question every movement I make. The sickness made it hard to contribute to the sessions, hard to wake up and share food with several hundred active alpha geeks, and worst of all, hard to think. My mind feels like cold suet, half-used and left in the bottom of the sink for a week. Every so often I would go out and try to interact, only to have people peer closely at me, trying to recognize the Will they knew in me. I was told I looked tired. I was told I should go to bed. I was told I should rest more. I was told I was very stubborn. Still, I learned something from it. I learn something from it every year, though it confuses and frustrates me. And it tells me how I am different this year. I can see what I know this year that I didn’t know last year. I can see how I’ve learned.
What I learned from this year (and know how much I still have to learn): how to accept praise I don’t feel is warranted; how to see my own mind in the moment; how to listen; how to be in love.
Being in love is awesome. I don’t mean that in just the California surfer dude sense. I mean that I am filled with awe, for love is both beautiful and terrifying. It destroys as it builds. I find myself looking through old albums, wandering through emails of past lovers, trying to see myself as that person. Did I love X? How did I feel about Y? What is the past compared to the future? What comparison can I make to something that overshadows me? And do I trust myself to be in love, in the present moment?
Old questions, all. Greek goatherds had better insight. I think about the implications, and in the end? I just be me.
But I am sick. And being sick makes me a shadow of myself – I am not the person I was, right now. Remembering who I was and who other people see me as, I reach for ideas and goals I cannot hold, and so I suffer. This is also an opportunity for learning. But it’s a hard lesson to learn.