Without Me
Seven years ago my relationship with myself changed drastically. Is like I realized for the first time the most obvious thing about me: I existed. Before that I always experienced life from an intellectual perspective, I just knew I was alive but I never really felt it with my whole being. This shift started to happen because I was forced into it. An emotional crisis led me naked in front of the fact that I was going through the motions of life, just giving continuity to an identity that was not chosen by me but unconsciously filtered through my fear of not being accepted by those who represented some kind of authority to me. The question “Who am I?” became very present, almost like and underlying voice behind all of my thoughts, actions and daily experiences.
This question was easy to answer in the first years as I would say “I am Emiliano, I am Costa Rican, I am a photographer…”, but there was a moment where I started to see that all these ways of defining myself, were deeply engrained constructs that I was taking for granted.
I had some emotional attachment to all these labels, some of them made me feel comfortable and others didn´t, but the totality of them were learned, I wasn’t any of those things the first time my eyes blinked. It became evident to me that there´s an abys between what we are and the roles we model: a clay bird is not a bird, is clay, and in that same logic, a human being is not a human, it is life itself.
Without “Me” may sound like a death sentence, but it is the opposite for me, it is the absence of the dream that I used to hide, and a recognition of the untouched eternity latent everywhere.
In these captured glimpses there was an invitation to dissolve, to let go of my defense mechanism against unknowing who or what am I.
This question was easy to answer in the first years as I would say “I am Emiliano, I am Costa Rican, I am a photographer…”, but there was a moment where I started to see that all these ways of defining myself, were deeply engrained constructs that I was taking for granted.
I had some emotional attachment to all these labels, some of them made me feel comfortable and others didn´t, but the totality of them were learned, I wasn’t any of those things the first time my eyes blinked. It became evident to me that there´s an abys between what we are and the roles we model: a clay bird is not a bird, is clay, and in that same logic, a human being is not a human, it is life itself.
Without “Me” may sound like a death sentence, but it is the opposite for me, it is the absence of the dream that I used to hide, and a recognition of the untouched eternity latent everywhere.
In these captured glimpses there was an invitation to dissolve, to let go of my defense mechanism against unknowing who or what am I.