“I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy and creativity to name a few.”
So here I am in a black and white ensemble and you might be wondering why I just quoted a statement that was against black and white when I, myself, am wearing a rather monochromatic outfit. Well, I usually like to relate my blog posts on my outfit choices with my life (SURPRISE!) and since I haven’t done that so much recently, allow me this moment to do so. To be quite frank, as with this post, despite the comfort I find in having things in black and white, I find that based on this new path of awakening I embarked on, I actually see in color now.
You see, I probably have the less desirable Personality Archetype in the Myers-Briggs Personality Test and since I was young, it never really changed much. I am an ISTJ and while the advantages of having such an archetype would be that I usually don’t make assumptions, analyze and search for facts and try to arrive at the most practical course of action, this no-nonsense way of living life tends to make me vulnerable when faced with indecisiveness, stressed out when people don’t hold to their own word and find it a hard time to go beyond conventional methods, see the bigger picture and tend to make decisions less on intuition and gut feel and go by the facts. I love quantitative data… numbers excite me and I usually go by the book. While that would make me the perfect logistician, I don’t exactly feel I am the right person to contact for conflict resolution since I will most likely be too focused on why things went so wrong in the first place and on what miscalculation resulted for the mishap.
In a nutshell: I particularly don’t like it when people say one thing and then actually mean something else. To be quite frank, I find myself to be very straightforward and expect other people to be the same way. Everything is really very black and white for me and I don’t like playing mind games.
The good thing about stepping outside my comfort zone and removing myself from a very controlled setting is that things absolutely didn’t always go my way, as planned or as I would have predicted it to be. At the end of the day, nothing is 100% accurate and things will go wrong… because that’s life. I was speaking to a very smart person recently on the troubles I was having on my issues of control and learning to let things go and he gave me some advice that made me put things into perspective (well not just in business actually but also in how I should go about life in general although he did give me the quote in relation to work) but allow me to rephrase what he said, “Like all other things, when you grow from complex to chaos, in the end, all you need is luck.”
At the end of the day, I realize that computers crash, things don’t go as planned or as timed, operations are halted or delayed, forecasts don’t push through, people die, relationships fall apart. And sometimes, the best we could do is just breath and reboot.
And true to the advice given to me, “Perhaps luck exists somewhere between the world of planning, the world of chance, and the peace that comes from knowing that you just can’t know it all. After all, life’s funny that way. Once you let go of the wheel, you might end up right where you belong.”
Button Down Black Cotton Blouse: Zara, Off White Crepe Midi Skirt: Seven Dials, Black Metal Border Bag: Vintage Italian, Studded Stiletto Shoes: Zara, Belt: Versace, Watch:Swatch, Chain Bracelet: Juicy Couture
Note: While I still prefer to stay within the lines and have things in black and white, I find I am more accepting of acknowledging the shades in between but on the background for now, as with these photos. But at least I can see in color now.
Photos by: Celyn
x, J