What the hell is going on here, I thought to myself. Where the hell did this guy come from him. I thought I did cool shit, This dude’s incredible.

I met him not long after moving home. A grandfather in his 50’s, he was powerful, athletic. And the stories he had? They knocked my socks off. Racing cars, racing boats / hydrofoils and all sorts of other massively cool adventures rolled off his tongue. One after another, he held the room with tales of his adventures. I was impressed. I also felt… sad?

Right? What’s to be sad about? Then I realized a silly little vain truth. He was the most interesting, adventurous, weirdest person in the room. Likely one of the most compelling people I’ve met. And I felt sad that it wasn’t me. It seems I had grown a bit fond of myself and the grand adventure I imagine my life to be.

I was sad because the story I had about myself, that I didn’t even realize that I had, didn’t match up with reality.

Lemmie back that up a bit.

I did not realize that I had a story that I told myself about how fucking exciting my life has been. I didn’t know about my own ‘heroic narrative’. I didn’t realized that I believed the events of my life were somehow exciting and exceptional. I liked to believe that much of the time, I was the most exciting person in the room.

And this time?

I wasn’t.

And a whole lot of the times I’ve believed that about myself? I was wrong then too. In fact, I was thinking about myself like Frasier Krane would have thought about himself.

Dang. Busted/

I learned a bit about my own arrogance there. Humbled by that understanding, I moved in more curious ways with folks. I was able to lean into a disowned part of myself and accept that loss.

Most of the time we want to be seen according to the stories we tell ourselves. Sometimes these stories distract us from other, stories, other aspects of ourself that we might not even see. Sadly this makes us miss some really important data. That’s where disowned parts come in.

When I go to the barber, after he cuts my hair, he takes a mirror and shows me the back of my head. I guess that’s to provided evidence that he has done his job and cut them there. Without him? I’d never no. Without a mirror held to the back of my head, I’d never know what it looked like

Disowned parts, when taken on at the suggestion of another is kind of like allowing yourself to see a part of yourself you don’t normally look for, need to know about or really spend much time thinking about.

Disowned parts are a filtered way to hear something you secretly know about yourself. They frequently touch on the aspects of yourself that you do not want to acknowledge. They’re the part, that thing, the others can see, but can’t describe accurately. Elephant in the room of the self kinda stuff.

What disowned part have you had projected upon you that has been most surprising?