Dualism

I’m re-reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin today. It’s less than 200 pages, and I remember absolutely loving the book when I read it in 12th grade AP English. At the age of 18, I knew little (yet) of having no concept of your own identity, your true self, your soul.

At 28, I know much more.

There are so many amazing lines, thoughts, ideas, and such imagery in this book. Here is one which made me stop my progression in reading because of the emotional connection and my immediate intuitive understanding:

“At a very early period she [Adele] had apprehended instinctively the dual life – the outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.”

The author is attempting to convey the beginning stages of Adele’s awakening into her own person. And while I relate to that significantly both now and at the age of 25, I see it as a different (current) personal struggle as it applies to my life.

My dualism is defined instead by the life that I feel pressured to live (the external conformity) and the life that my soul longs to live (the incessant inward questioning). The life of external conformity is the corporate world, the 9-5, the soul-sucking, life-draining non-challenging work of insurance. The desired life is different, though not as clearly defined. It could be painted in numerous different colours, in varying cityscapes, across different continents. The recurring theme is a simpler lifestyle of cultivation. Cultivating a family, cultivating a vineyard, cultivating a garden, cultivating a lifestyle, cultivating.

But the external world suffocates the internal cries with its comfortability and familiarity; it silences the soul’s passions with its money and ease. The soul is sometimes easily overtaken, the sensitive spirit that it can be.

Yet an awakening comes – a battle for the forward progressing years between external and internal, between expectation and desire, between normalcy and normalcy. For neither is necessarily wrong, but one is simply

True.

The other is merely a sell out.

Maybe in late April you’ll find me stuck in the sands of Puerto Rico, return ticket torn and tossed to the tides, vodka and mixer in hand, serving locals and vacationers alike from the backside of the beachside tiki bar,

Cultivating a clientele and a tan.

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