Nobody
Who is the brave one?
6/18/20262 min read
Nobody
Since writing Clearer Perspective something has continued to open. Less certain, more present, less armoured.
Douglas would probably say — ah, so here you are...
The experience yesterday with Douglas and my reflection afterwards found me in the territory of 'identity.' About how much energy we pour into the story of who we (think we) are — constructing it, maintaining it, defending it when it's threatened. Polishing it. As Tori Amos put it in Winter — skating around the truth of who we are.
It's exhausting. And for what return?
Because that's the thing about stories. We latch onto them for a reason — lostness, mostly. The need to make sense of things, to have somewhere to stand. And there's nothing wrong in that. The stories serve a purpose. They carry us through the fire. But slowly, quietly, they start to wear us. We think we're trying on a coat, seeing how it looks, whether it fits. And then one day we realise the coat is wearing us. It's tribal. We've pretty much forgotten there's a person underneath.
We're hustling. Looking for a return. Safety, recognition, belonging. The story is the pitch.
Recently I've been decorating my house. I'd built a whole story around it before I began — all that work, all that effort, how hard it was going to be. And then I picked up the brush and it just... happened. The somebody who dreaded it stepped aside and 'nobody' did the job. White walls. Clear light. A house that turned out to be brighter than the story said it would be.
Nobody did that. And nobody did it well.
So what's this about the brave one? She's not easy to describe because the moment you name her she slips sideways. She's everything and nothing. Always there. She doesn't avoid the fire — she is the fire. She sees life because she is life, though not 'a' life. She doesn't belong to anyone or anything, she's all of it.
She is the invisible glass we see through. Not the view, not the light — the glass itself. Transparent. Clean. Without her nothing is visible and yet you'd never notice her. She requires no maintenance, no polishing, no story to sustain her. She was there through all of it — the fear, the patterns, the survival, the smoke — and she never left. She never needed to.
She asks for nothing. That's the whole of her power.
She became visible not through quiet reflection but through five hundred kilograms of horse, just being himself. His communication was clear. It was mine that wasn't. He had no idea what I was asking of him — because I barely knew myself. And then I saw who I was being through her eyes. That kind, compassionate clarity that never leaves. That never judges. That never hustles for a return.
Be more Douglas.
Get in your boots. Feel the ground. Show up without the fluff.
Five hundred kilos of authenticity, entirely unselfconscious, just being Douglas. That'll bring you to your boots faster than anything.
The one brave enough to look saw the glass.
She was the one doing the looking all along.
