No matter where you go, there you are.
Back in the 1900s, a most excellent film came out: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, starring Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum, and more. It is hilarious, and bananas in all the best ways. Weller (Buckaroo Banzai) is a brain surgeon, rock musician and scientist—he breaks through solid matter in a car, using something called the Oscillation Overthruster, which allows him to move through the “8th Dimension.” (This movie came out the year before Back to the Future, with its Flux Capacitor.) The premise of the movie is that aliens actually landed in Grovers Mills, NJ in 1938 when Orson Welles broadcast War of the Worlds on the radio (causing a panic).
At one point in the film, which I highly encourage you to watch if you haven’t seen it yet, Buckaroo Banzai (rock band version) tells the crowd not to be mean, saying “no matter where you go, there you are.” I’m nearly certain it’s where Jon Kabbat-Zinn came up with the title for his book, Wherever You Go, There You Are.
What does this have to do with anything?
Well, I’m glad I asked.
You cannot get away from yourself.
And I say that as a person who has excelled at dissociation since childhood (thanks, childhood trauma!). I can escape into a book—almost literally, paying such attention to my reading that I don’t necessarily register what’s going on around me. I can hyper focus on a task with the best of them.
Despite all that, I am still there. Stuck with myself.
Turns out that you are going to spend 24 hours a day, every day for your entire life, with yourself.
Of course, you can keep yourself so occupied that you spend years without knowing yourself.
You can run from what you want to do. You can hide from who you want to be.
But still, there you are, whether you know yourself or not. Whether you have reached for your dreams or not.
Whether you like yourself or not.
No matter where you go, there you are.
And it applies to all of you:
your inner child, with all their hopes and dreams, along with all their hurts and disappointments
your inner teen, with all their hopes and dreams, along with all their hurts, their rage, and their feelings of uncertainty or inadequacy
your higher self, essentially your soul. It’s a pure version of you, at the highest level. It seeks expansion and connection with universal one-ness
your ego: your decision-making internal processor, and also the part of you that tries to help you steer the ship and make the decisions that make you happy and give you what you most want
When you read the news these days, all of these components have something to say about it.
Your inner child is frightened, just as they were when you were little and something scary happened. It remembers how it felt to be powerless, and to have adults in your vicinity who were perhaps out-of-control, or dangerous, or threatening in some way. And it pulls those feelings back out for you, even if that isn’t always super helpful.
Your inner teen is angry because things are unfair, and people aren’t following the rules. (Your inner teen really hates it when people rig the playing field.) Teenagers are idealistic and tend to have big hopes and dreams, even if they can’t see how to achieve them. They are often mocked for it, or told to forget it, by the “adults” in their lives (who are not always operating from a grown-up place, to be honest). They are angry and disappointed and upset because they want to make the world a better place, and what they are seeing is how the world takes advantage of teenagers.
Your higher self also knows that this is not how things are supposed to be, and wants the world to be a better place, though it comes at it from a more spiritual plane. It wants everyone to be fully actualized and to be operating from their best vantage point, but that’s not the reality of things. When your higher self sees news about government agents abducting people or rich white men taking advantage of children, it pulls up short. It doesn’t understand, because that’s not how things are supposed to be. It just knows you are better than that.
And your ego? Well, it is trying to figure out a lot of things, including: how does this affect me and my loved ones? is there something I can do to make things better? should I say or do something? is it worth any risk I might have to take? Your ego works through those questions while listening to input from your id (I want what I want) and your superego (urging caution so you don’t get hurt in any way). Plus it networks with those other parts of you I just mentioned.
Your brain is a supercomputer running a whole bunch of different programs, all while taking in a ton of information from everywhere around you. It decides what you think, and often how you feel about something. It is trying to protect you at the same time as it is trying to help you take risks.
Right now, with so much catastrophic news happening on a daily basis (starvation in Gaza and Cuba, war in Ukraine and elsewhere, US political news, a worldwide pedophilia scandal, rogue government agencies doing things they shouldn’t be doing, and more), your supercomputer is probably feeling a bit overtaxed. It has to sift through all that stuff, plus all the daily things in your life—your job, your relationships, your wants and needs, etc.
No wonder so many folks are feeling overwhelmed right now.
But no matter where we go, there we are. Still having to find ways to deal with it.
One of the best things you can do right now is to take care of yourself and your needs.
These include the usual suspects that I bang on about, including food, hydration, nutrition, movement, and sleep. But they also include your need for safety (at the root of everything, even though Maslow doesn’t put it among the “foundational” needs that I just mentioned). It also includes your higher-level needs, such as whimsy, fun, and contribution to society, all of which (I would point out) are examples of things that lead to the highest level of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, which is self-actualization.
As I’ve been pointing out throughout this post, you are always you. No matter where you go, there you are.
Consequently, for you to be the best you, your needs must be met. The need to feel safe. The need to rest and to have enough to eat. The need to feel like you are doing something to make at least your corner of the world a better place, whether by taking care of yourself or your pets or your people.
For you to be the best you, you need to exercise your creativity and joy. Even—or especially—when things in the world are bad.
Maybe your creativity is coming out in something like painting or making music. Maybe it’s in redecorating a room in your house. Maybe it’s in reimagining your wardrobe, or seeking accessories at a local thrift store. Perhaps it’s cooking or baking, or crafting, or dancing. Whatever it is, creativity lights us up and allows us to contribute something to our world, whether in a big or small way.
Whether you choose to find joy in celebrating when your favorite athletes do well at the Olympics (or elsewhere), to dance along with Bad Bunny during his Super Bowl show (or with someone else’s music), or in holding your cat or grandchild (it can’t be just me who finds joy in those actions) . . . it is important to seek and find joy. Again, whether it is in a big or small way.
All ways count.
When it comes to creativity and joy, all ways count: big or small. Global or local. Group or individual.
Whether you sing with a choir, a quartet, or solo in the shower, it counts. Whether you write a play that gets produced, or a picture book manuscript, or a poem that you keep to yourself, it counts. Whether you design the set for a movie or play, or decorate your living room, or set up a corner of your couch with a throw pillow, afghan and candle, it counts.
ALL creativity counts. ALL joy counts.
ALL of it makes you feel more happy or satisfied, and all of it makes you feel more YOU.
No matter where you go, there you are. Make it a nice place to be.
As always, if you are interested in working with me, I will remind you that I am a witchy coach. And I get great results for my clients with my witchy form of coaching, which combines regular coaching tools with my own intuition and energy work.
If you are finding that, on hitting perimenopause or menopause, you don’t really know who you are, or what you want, then I really encourage you to try coaching. Same goes for if you’ve hit perimenopause and found that all of a sudden, you just can’t tolerate the shit you used to put up with. It’s really common to lose the ability to mask when our hormones start swinging wildly, and coaching and energy work can help. You can purchase a session at this link (we will pick a mutually agreeable date and time together).
Finally, if you find that you have all sorts of negative self-talk and you really want some help getting your inner mean girl to stop talking, or to start being constructive if she won’t shut up, then you might want to try my coaching package that legit helps you retrain your self-talk. That package of four sessions can be found here.