The Observer

I don't know how old I was, but I know my cousin is one year younger than me. She had an imaginary friend, so the math would suggest early childhood. It was the first time I was meeting her. We went to my room to play with dolls, but I wasn't that good at it, or too fond of that kind of play. Seeing my lack of interest, we switched to talking. She was telling me about her imaginary friend, and her relationship with that imaginary friend. As she was talking I was seeing a wounded girl looking for connection, but only being able to find it in her imagination. I wasn't looking down on her. I was empathising. Even so, I saw the imaginative aspect of it as maladaptive behavior born out of a denial of her reality.

To me a connection had to be real. I found there would be no point to pretend that I have a friend if that friend wasn't real. I felt it was best to wait, and hold space for such a friend to show up in my life. I didn't tell her this. I didn't want to hurt her, or make her uncomfortable. I kept it to myself. So when she asked me if I had an imaginary friend, I simply answered no. This prompted her to tell me I am boring, and that I have no imagination. That hurt me profoundly. The idea that maybe she was right was even more hurtful. I didn't know if she was right, but I was willing to look into it. I found it preferable to simply accept it as my reality if it was true.

It was then that I thought just how cool it would be if I could just observe myself from the outside. I could then assess if I did or did not have imagination. I trusted my judgement enough to make such an assessment. I was only interested in the objective truth of it anyway. I felt truth and clarity were needed so I would know how to orient myself.

It started from here as a form of self-discovery. I remember how when I first tried self-observation I realised it wasn't as easy I thought it would be. I didn't stop though, and it just grew over time. It grew to the point it became a constant and ongoing background process, where I would catch every thought, every feeling, inquiring into their nature and provenance, analysing and contrasting my reflections and discoveries to the perceptions outside of myself. It was nothing forced, or something I would have to push myself into, but merely my operating system if you will, one that grew with time. This practice also helped me to plenty of times see the distortions those around me would engage in, either consciously or unconsciously. I felt I could trace the distortions in them, and oftentimes I felt I could trace them back to an environmental limitation, or a pain they kept hidden even from themselves. It didn't come from a place of judgement, but merely one of discovery of both self and other.

My particular interest in distortion came as a consequence of it seemingly being a normalised social inter-relational practice. I think the idea of social practices rooted in flattery for the sake of flattery, or similar practices that carry a distortion of sorts grew to seem irrational to me when I had a sufficient sample of people who would carry their inside on the outside. Oftentimes these people didn't just do that, but seemed to have a certain understanding within themselves. A kind of understanding that made them to not feel the need to hide from themselves, and others. They had a certain way of moving and being that I genuinely admired. I found it even more admirable that such a way of being seemed to be accompanied by lack of judgement, not just towards themselves, but towards others in equal measure.

It took me a while to understand that what I had been doing all my life was in essence a practice of awareness - one that grew organically from curiosity. What began as a child's wish to see herself from the outside became an ongoing dialogue between observer and observed, self and other. In time, that dialogue deepened: tracing distortions, seeking coherence, and learning to meet truth without defence. By my late twenties, this inner discipline had become embedded into my nature - a silent observer recording every thought and feeling, trying to map them into the nature of experience. Without knowing it, I had been training my consciousness to perceive itself.