Vachon Imagined

Bringing life back to yourself means allowing life to be what it is, rather than what you want it to be.

We want to be seen as good people, so jealousy isn’t allowed. We want to be seen as righteous people, so hatred, sorrow, and loneliness aren’t allowed. It’s not only that we want others to see us this way—to avoid losing love, attention, connection, or power—but we want to see ourselves this way too. We want to believe we’re happy, generous, and loving.

The problem begins when we seek love instead of being it.

We look to other people to accept us, prove our worth, and offer us a seat at the table, without recognizing that this longing is often born from need—and, at times, jealousy. It’s natural to want a seat at the table. It’s also natural to watch someone else take that seat and feel they don’t deserve it. None of this is the problem.

What feels extraordinary is remaining with life before the mind turns experience into an objective truth. Before feeling hardens into identity. Before emotion becomes a story.

If you look closely at oppressive systems, you’ll notice they’re built through denial. They permit some things and reject others. In many ways, every system functions through inclusion and exclusion. That isn’t inherently wrong; it’s simply the nature of systems. The mistake is believing those systems define reality itself.

The same process happens within us.

When we bring life back to ourselves, we stop resisting jealousy, anger, grief, even happiness. We stop trying to control experience and instead allow life to unfold. People leave. People reject us. They don’t invite us to the table. Rather than becoming consumed by the event, we stay with what it awakens within us and allow that experience to exist without immediately trying to change it.

In doing so, we begin to see that the same judgment and oppression we experience from the world are mirrored within ourselves. We deny parts of ourselves just as we’ve been denied by others. Once you truly see this, you can’t unsee it.

From there, the path becomes one of awakening, resistance, and return. Again and again, you notice where you’ve abandoned yourself, and again and again, you return home.

Home is not a place where jealousy, anger, or longing never arise. It is the place within you that no longer needs to reject them. It is the place that exists before the self has divided life into what is acceptable and what is not. The more that false self softens, the more available that home becomes.