In This Life, You Can Only Be You… No One Else
“…We are looking at a May release date for your book.”
The email confirmed and made real-real the fact that my memoir Finding Lalla’s Anna was going to be published.
I was elated. Then pensive. Lalla will not be here for this Day – Our Day. I closed my eyes, breathed in and exhaled deeply. I imagined my conversation with my grandmother:
“Lalla, I wrote a book.”
“About what?”
“My life and everything you and the elders taught me that helped find my way in America.”
“Everything?”
“Well, not everything… but the important things that helped me...”
“What did people say?”
“That they wished they’d met you… that I was very fortunate to have you as my guide in my life, and I agree.”
She would chuckle to hide her love and her pride.
“I didn’t do much. You just became who I knew you were supposed to be.”
“Yes, because of you.”
I would hand her the book. She would open it and laugh:
“Oh, there are pictures of me.”
“Of course, I want everyone to know who Lalla is.”
“But I’m old…”
“No, you’re not. You’re my Lalla.”
She would carefully turn the pages as if she was reading them. Then she would bless it, wish it success, and keep it nearby. For months, every visitor who stopped by, would have to hear about the book Anna wrote in a language that few people understood because French is the work language in Mali, and English is taught as a second language.
I could see our neighbors annoyed as they quickly passed by our door whispering among themselves about how tired they were to hear Lalla always talk about her granddaughter as if she was the only one who had a family member in America. Everyone had a loved one living in that country.
Tchurrr… So much noise for a book, nobody can read!
I’m grateful and sad at the same time. And in that moment, I feel my grandmother’s presence whispering: “In this life, you can only be you… Nobody else.”
Ah! Does everything have to be a lesson?
It’s the one who gets lost who discovers new paths.
I was born to be a storyteller. But before embracing this calling, I spent years of my adult life trying to be many things because being a writer wasn’t considered serious job that paid the bills. In a world of competition where our relatives, neighbors and friends celebrated all our small and big victories, and parents discussed out loud who they hoped we would later be doctors, lawyers, accountant, teachers, etc., storyteller didn’t make the list. Hence, my deep love for words was pushed down but never out. It became a hobby which left space for both outside and self-inflicted expectations, pressure, and fear to enter my life.
Expectations, pressure and fear: the burdens that came with every hope and dream placed in me by my family, my community, and most importantly by me.
Expectations gave my life purpose and meaning. They provided a vision of what my life should be, and how to please everyone with reasonable and attainable goals.
Pressure said that I’d better perform because I had something to prove. The pressure to achieve my goals – the be “someone" – was the fire that made me work hard. I had to show my family, my friends, colleagues, supervisors and most of all myself that yes, I could do anything that I set my heart to do. I was going to be a success story, if it killed me.
Fear was like a second skin. It colored everything in my life – most of the time making situations seem more dramatic than they actually were.
With the years, expectations, pressure and fear developed into an operating system that controlled my life.
This way of life was unsustainable. It took years, but ultimately, I crashed. I wasn’t where I thought I would be professionally and in my personal life. And I didn’t know what to do about it. I was physically and emotionally wiped out. What was I doing wrong? Why was everything in my life such a struggle?
As I stated when I first started You Are One and Many, I needed to be saved from myself – my constant disparaging over my lack of success, and the relentless beating up for not having done enough to become the Anna that lived in my head.
I called my grandmother. Lalla listened intently. Instead of comforting me, my grandmother dared me to dig deep within and find answers to the whys of my unfulfilled life. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Lalla’s questions sent me on a painful, unpredictable, and most of all liberating journey of freeing myself of all the expectations, pressure and fear that ruled my life, so I could find who I wanted to be; and know why I wanted the things that I wanted.
And so, today as I embrace being a storyteller, my elders’ wise words come back to me: In this life, you can only be you… no one else. In other words, know, accept, and love all that you are enough to live at peace within and with the world surrounding you. Own your voice, your purpose, your space and your place both within and in the outside world.
Storytelling is no longer a hobby, it’s an important part of my life – one that I embrace wholeheartedly and one where I can finally admit without apology or vanity, I like the way I’m doing this.
Dear reader, I took a moment to thank the Heavens, the ancestors and my Lalla. But this post is also the introduction to the next issues I would like to share with you: Expectations, Pressure and Fear – the beginning, rise and consequences of the most powerful operating system within.
Thank you for your time. And until we come together again, be kind to yourself, and do not let the noises of the world make you doubt the voice inside your gut.