Page 42 - locotrip-001

locotrip 41

identifying with the loss as part that our way of being becomes
of oneself, and transforming it more fluid. We do not need to
into ‘scars’ which will accom- be firm and determined in our
pany me through the rest of my appropriations. What is needed
life. It is holding onto it and let- though is meaning – in every
ting go at the same time, in an process of alienation and ap-
oscillating movement. This is propriation it is crucial what I
what people call ‘pain that myself think and feel about the
comes in waves’ or ‘healing given situation, how I value it,
process’ (but healing is not ac- and how I integrate it into my
curate, because there is no goal unrepeatable life-flow. Since the
which needs to be achieved, self is not given, but always a
but instead, it is an ongoing, a self in the making, the unity of
never ending movement). The the life-flow is again, something
split that alienation creates, the that I myself have created while
distance, the inability to identify responding in a certain way to
with oneself and the world, is, in what occurred in its fabric. It is
extreme cases, something that the gift of understanding, of
cannot be bridged by will. Am- knowing ourselves and of mak-
bivalence is another point to be ing sense of our own past with-
mentioned. ‘Overcoming’ alien- out excluding anything that has
ation often has the taste of goal- been painful, alienated or re-
orientation, perfectionism, gretful in it, which brings us a
solutions which need to be real chance of living a less
found. But I want to claim that alienated life as individuals.
to appropriate something does
not mean to be fully certain
about what one does, believes
or feels: ‘I can be myself without
being wholehearted in a sub-
stantial sense.’1 Doubt, feeling
lost, is allowed and part of the
process. Every time persons,
projects we become passionate
about, and attachments enter
our lives,they irritate us in a way

Μaya Berseneva