Raluca Maria

How do I become a more and more whole person? There are people who spend their entire lives renovating the living room. They replace the sofa. Repaint the walls. Buy new furniture, but stuff into the basement whatever they no longer like, and never find the courage to go down there, nor do they ever climb up to the attic. One day, the house begins to demand to be lived in fully. And what seems like a renovation is, sometimes, just the way life forces us to go down to the basement and up to...

I see the same thing repeated in my work: anxiety, burnout, a deep sense of "I can't go on like this." People who have everything (or seem to) and are empty inside. I've been there. That's what made me change direction. I believe many of us have become profoundly disconnected from what we truly feel. What's inside speaks to us, but we've learned to move away from what we feel. And now we live in a world of emperors whose beautifully tailored clothes show everyone just how empty we've become...

I look at how we treat one another, and I recognize — not without a certain discomfort — that what bothers me in others, I find in myself too. And then comes the question that won't leave me alone: how do we end up behaving in ways that contradict who we believe we are? We polarize quickly. There are those who take up the other person's space too, often without realizing it. And there are those who withdraw, who make room, who would rather disappear, avoid, than occupy. I've been in both...