Restless energy is tied to everything that I am. It scares me to let go of this restlessness. Although it's suffocating, it's the only thing that's ever made me feel safe, but what started out as foot tapping and nail biting turned into panic attacks and palpitations. I don't know when or how these complicated feelings transformed into the anxiety that I am dealing with today. Maybe I've always been an anxious person who was just really good at hiding it. Nobody wants to deal with someone who complicates everything, whose body starts shaking when they're a minute later to a doctor's appointment, or whose throat starts to close up while they're chewing food. I thought it was normal to always feel out of breath, and I feel so sorry for the person I used to be because she blamed herself for something that had nothing to do with her. I seemingly master everything but myself, which is why I felt and continue to feel so empty sometimes. I self-sabotaged a lot of great experiences, and I kept telling myself that I deserved none of it. The lengths that we would go to  hurt ourselves is tragic. Pursuing perfection wasn't worth it. I should've stayed still longer. I should've savored and surrendered to each and every second longer. It's strange because it feels like I am re-learning how to coexist with myself. The things that once gave me satisfaction don't even scratch the surface of my appetite. If you ask me what it is that I want, I'll always say peace. Peace is not something that you must reach or earn, it simply is which is why I think that's the most profound state of being. If I could tell my younger self one thing, it would be: what's the rush? All that you'll ever need is right here.

How many of us have chosen to stuff our feelings inside of a box so that we could preserve ourselves? God forbid we untie the ribbon and release our demons. We've been told to do everything but feel our feelings, and Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle forced me to take a hard look at the maladaptive ways I had been coping with my stress. But here's the thing, there's no such as "coping" with stress; stress is not a feeling you can reason with.

It's terrorizes every part of your being, and manifests the more that you neglect to take care of it. You can distract yourself all you want, but your body doesn't forget it's there. It manifests in your foot tapping, jaw clenching, and nail biting. You cannot think your way out of stress, you must feel your way out of it and complete the cycle. Something that deeply resonated with me while reading this book was the idea of "Human Giver Syndrome" or "the contagious belief that you have a moral obligation to give every drop of your humanity in support of others, no matter the cost to you." In other words, it doesn't matter if your cup is empty - keep giving even if you have nothing left to give! It feels like my entire existence I've seen my elders, especially women, fall into this trap.

​The perpetual praise of extreme self-sacrifice has fooled women into thinking they need to be martyrs. What's so great about inflicting all this pain on ourselves as women? We've crushed and abandoned ourselves under the weight of everyone else's needs; and then when we finally relinquish our sticks for swords, and  draw closer to the fire inside of our hearts, what does the world tell us? That we're selfish. Daughters like me come from  generations of women who have been told to sit quietly and listen. Imagine everyone's surprise when they found out I couldn't sit still and watch my life pass by without any meaning. It took a lot of time for me to realize that I did not have to carry everyone else's wounds to hold value as a woman in this world. I was allowed to put myself first, even if it made everyone else uncomfortable. I did not have to earn the right to put myself first. I exist, and I inherently deserve the right to my existence and all that it entails. One thing is for sure, the temptation of pleasing the world no longer appeals to me. It's time to break generational curses, it's time for a revolution. No more hiding, I'm see through and I am not scared of you.

Some teachings that stuck out to me the most were:

• "Wellness is not a state of being, but a state of action."
• "Whatever calls you, whether it's the ocean or art or family or democracy, isn't out there. It's inside of you."
• "What makes you stronger is whatever happens to you after you survive the thing that didn't kill you."
• "If you're using up decision-making about food, clothes, exercise, makeup, body hair, "toxins", and fretting about your body's failures, what are you too exhausted to care about, that you would otherwise prioritize?"

The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down scratches on the edges of simplicity and complexity at the same time. The teachings of Haemin Sunim is transparent. You don't have to deliberate or drag yourself to the depths of the ocean to understand what he is saying. With it short quotes and uncomplicated anecdotes, the book is in and of itself an embodiment of slowing down. While reading I couldn't help think that this book was too simple, and that it's statements seemed too obvious. Buried in my ego was this misconception that in order for something to be worthwhile it had to be profound. Something was valuable only if it was unabashedly throwing itself at you with it's textured words and glittery images, but this book doesn't pretend to be something that it is not. One minute you could be reading about the deception of pizza advertisements, and then a quote like "knowledge wants to talk, wisdom wants to listen" comes up; I had no idea what was coming next, and that made reading this book all the more enjoyable. The joy of such spontaneity could only be realized by slowing down; if you didn't slow down, you'd miss the humor and fun in Sunim's teachings. Maybe that process of unwinding from our own expectations and seeing things as plainly and simply as they are is where true happiness can be found. A saying from the book that stuck with me was:

In other words, what if our problems are only problems because we perceive them as problems? Perception is a pretty strange thing. Each and every single one of us operates within our own little world, separated from the truth of what actually is. What if human beings are incapable of truth? Or maybe each of us are small fragments of what could be true? Some of us (myself included) don't like being in a crowded subway car, but why? If we never had the concept of feeling "crowded", then would we have felt bothered by it in the first place? In that moment when I feel suffocated in the subway, is it really me feeling that way or is it something that I was taught to feel by the world around me? It makes you wonder how much of our feelings are really ours to begin with. Maybe if you dig a little deeper and slow down, you'll know how to differentiate between the two. This book was a much needed reminder that I am allowed to be a tortoise in a hare world. Slow down, otherwise it'll all just be one giant blur.

The thing is I had no idea that I was at the end. You spend such a long time spiraling in and out of chaos that when it finally stops you can’t fully comprehend its absence. One day, the pain and suffering just seemed to fold in on itself until it died into a whisper that lingered beneath the vibrations of my existence. All I was left with was this cavity, this opening that was no longer filled with such heartache. As a child I remember driving to school and looking out the window to see clusters of birds circling around the edges of the sky. Their wings stretched so far and wide, and as I watched them my eyes glittered in awe and envy. I felt trapped, like a bird whose wings were clipped and then tossed into a golden cage. How could I be filled with so much anxiety despite achieving so much? I was a bird who couldn’t see her wings, who thought they had been painfully ripped apart for everyone else to chew on. All of this achievement felt like a facade, an illusion to keep my world intact, until one day the thread snapped and the cage had swung open. Anxiety summoned my body, and I was held captive. I spent nights holding onto my chest just to feel a heartbeat because I thought I was going to die. I would be walking in the hallways when suddenly I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t understand what was happening to me, and so I stayed in the cage a little longer even though I could leave. It felt safer to be naïve than it did to face what I was going through. The darkness had consumed so much of my life that I felt like I had nothing to look forward to. After years of staying inside this golden cage, I remember feeling the weight of my emotions slowly melting off of me. At first it was gradual, I started feeling less afraid and I gained the courage to look at my pain right in the eye. As I’ve always said, pain is an unloved child scorned and abandoned by those too afraid to face it. I would still pass by the bundle of birds in the sky, but I felt so far away from them. I wondered what it felt like to fly, to feel the breath of freedom in my lungs. They seemed to circle around the clouds without a care in the world. It wasn’t until the other day as I was gardening in my backyard that I realized what it meant to feel like the birds. I had exchanged my golden cage for dirt and worms, the smell of the Earth pardoning me from my prison; it’s been years since my last panic attack. As I stood with both knees digging into the dirt, and both hands holding the roots of my marigold plant, I finally realized that I somehow made it to the end. I didn’t have to fly like the birds to feel free, all I had to do was walk. Let’s be real, I was never going to be a bird, but that was the point. I can’t be what I’m not, and there’s freedom in transforming into who you truly are. I don’t have to be this other thing to feel free, I just needed to start surrendering to me.

Written in August 2021.