This is Me. The Fool on the Hill.
I found myself feeling conflicted from a very early age. I could quickly sense emotions in others, puzzled that the world seemed to create the conditions that made some negative emotions inevitable, whereas other, more positive emotions had to be consciously manufactured.
My memory is flooded by a sense of feeling lonely and fearful.
It didn’t go away. I got much better at manufacturing the other emotions, at great effort and energetic cost, but the feeling of loneliness and fear stayed.
Paul McCartney’s 1967 hit, ‘The Fool on the Hill’ explores a character who is seen by the majority to be a fool, someone of ridicule, yet the fool’s isolation and loneliness has afforded him the capacity for great wisdom.
I was adopted as a baby. I have no doubt that this process improved my life outcomes. I was raised with love, with material wealth and opportunities for which I am eternally grateful but I was always lonely and fearful. I still live with overwhelming fear, every day, the only escape being to shut myself away….or to sit on my hill silently watching the world spinning round.
The energy cost of living in constant fear is extraordinary. I have achieved some really challenging goals. I spent the majority of my education one year ahead of my peers. I achieved my childhood dream of becoming a military pilot. I sometimes wonder how much I could have achieved if I wasn’t losing 30% of my daily energy to fighting fears.
In 2020, I woke up feeling dizzy and unwell. To my horror, I could think about what I wanted to say but could only get one or two words out before I was mentally blocked. Consequently, as I arrived downstairs to try to tell my wife what was happening, I was met with a smile, then worry, then sickening fear. I was having a stroke.
Strangely, as the hospital staff rushed me in for testing, I wasn’t worried, just relieved. It was so exhausting being me, perhaps this unfortunate event would bring a new chapter, even accepting the possible long term effects of a stroke. I could walk, and use my arms, I just couldn’t talk. The testing went on all day and then all night.
Finally, after twenty four hours, I was told that there was no evidence of a stroke from the testing. In actual fact, by all accounts I’d made a perfect recovery. There was nothing wrong with me at all and the doctors could not explain what had happened. At a follow up physio appointment I was informed by the Physio that the muscles in my back and shoulders were almost unworkable, like rock. She began to ask me life questions….was I stressed?……did I get regular headaches?……where did the headache pain originate from? Unofficially, she told me that my muscular stress levels were not a sustainable thing, I was doing great damage.
Fast forward to present day.
From therapy discussion and my coaching training I now recognise that I live with fear, perhaps stemming from the process of adoption, and only partially in a conscious way. Behind the scenes, my brain and all the associated systems are telling me to be scared…of everything, all the time.
I could do what I’ve done because I am a good actor, maybe even because I am a high achiever by design. I fulfilled my childhood dream by not being honest with myself and creating unseen damage.
The stroke-like episode was inevitable. A wake up call. My body telling me to invest some time and honesty, to understand and be at peace with my emotions and to start to reject the feelings of shame that I have accumulated over my nearly five decades.
Like the fool, I have learned to sit with my fear, my loneliness. They are my superpowers. I no longer feel the shame associated with so many things that kept me down. It was mentioned to me by an already wise person, that loneliness can bring wisdom, from noticing more and seeing a bigger picture. My journey to wisdom isn’t assured but my ability to help others is.
News just in! We might be more than just physical. Don’t ignore your mental health and your emotional education. Learn to be you.
