Being

I spent the first 19 years of my life living outside myself. I think we have this notion as human beings that when our thoughts are all jumbled up and we are feeling fearful and anxious, that we are “too much in our own heads.” The truth however (in my opinion), is that we are lacking just that. We are outside of our own beings-absorbing this world around us, without stopping to be still and actually be inside of our own heads. The distinction took what seems like an eternity for me to figure out, but eventually it clicked. I was not the problem. My true pure self is not the issue. But, this self that I’ve created to appease and reside in society (properly) is what was stopping my own growth and progress. The summer of 2015. Tofino, BC. I feel like I owe a lot to this time and place in my life. I had been living in Ontario since I was born. I had met some of the most incredible people, and I lived amongst many who felt love for me and that I felt love for. I also lived in a space where I was subject to a great deal of misfortune. Originally when writing this I wanted to divulge into details of what negativity had taken place in my personal journey. However, I realize now that I can still make an impact simply acknowledging that there has been highs, and there has certainly been what seems and seemed, like the lowest-lows. The real point or idea of saying this is to put out there that though things were not easy, what really and truly put me into the darkest days was my own self refusing to acknowledge my higher-self. I realize using this sort of language-higher self-posses automatic doubt in the reader, if they do not believe in a sort of spiritual world. But for the purpose of staying true to myself while writing this, I will use this title.

I was a university student in debt, looking for a job for the summer months. I had to go back to school for one more year, and I had been on a very specific track financially that would help me get there. When I posed the idea to my parents about leaving, spending money on travel, and going to Tofino for the summer, to work as a housekeeper making minimum wage, they nearly laughed in my face. I love my parents a lot, and am infinitely grateful for what they bring into my life (in a variety of ways), however they were scared that making this choice would mean me falling even more behind, by societal standards. At least, this is my opinion on what happened, and what they were feeling (though I can never really know, because each individuals perception is different). I was in debt, and they knew I wouldn’t be making a lot of money being away, and therefore when I got out of school I would be even farther away from making my “real” life happen. I am laughing as I write that line, because the most “realness” I have ever experienced was during my summer in Tofino.

If you are from there, or have travelled there, you know that the landscape and people make everything seem dream-like. Not real. You’re in this constant flux of magic. I met people who had travelled from all around the world, just to come together and take in life. Indulge in the world’s questions, and express love not only for one another, but openly for themselves. I met friends that I think have changed my life in more ways than I can recognize right now. I have never been so grateful for an opportunity. Upon arrival I remember seeing everyone at my staff accommodation sitting around a fire pit in flannels and tuques, laughing and playing guitar. I was intimidated by the energy surrounding them. It was so free…so at peace. I was fearful that I wouldn’t fit in with them, because truthfully, at the beginning of that summer, I wasn’t aware fully of what I had to offer. I wasn’t aware of this free and peaceful energy that I held in myself. In the “real” world back at home in Ontario, it seems unnatural to posses this sort of vibration. Even the words energy and vibration would send some people running. Or, would provoke the words “hippie” or “hipster” to be thrown in my direction. With the risk of this being twenty pages long, I’ll skip to August, when I was set to go home…return back to real life. I think it is important to acknowledge that everything that happened in between the months of May and August are truly the most significant aspects of my trip. The nights watching people I felt genuine love for, who I barely knew at the time, singing Irish songs and drinking beers while hugging one another every so often. The days I took trips out into nature with the girls I met that evoked in me that I was and am special and worth a good life. My birthday in June, where a group of especially wondrous beings gathered and made me feel so incredibly full of life, I knew I could never go back. I would never be the same again. I was “bumming” around in the “hippie” capital of Canada, instead of in Toronto working at some business that would look a whole lot better on my resume. I spent my days floating about in the ocean, thinking of who I have been, what I have done, and what I will do. And it was perfect. I want to say that not everyone agreed with me, and I definitely did not love everyone I met or everything I saw with my entire heart. But even those people, or those situations that seemed to pull me back down into this place outside myself, where I felt lost and alone, helped make my summer what it was. And I am grateful for that too. Just as much as all the people and places I will experience in my future, that I don’t agree with, or that don’t agree with me. It is absolutely mandatory to recognize that humans need both sunshine and rain to grow. The good, and the not-so good, to become our whole, true, self.

I am writing this because I think coming back home and having some time to really be within my own head, and reflect on what has happened to me internally, has really had this effect on my being that caused myself to “wake-up.” Somewhere in this sleepy, dream-like, floating about state, that was Tofino, I found myself more awake and aware than ever before. Arriving back home, I see the pull of this constructed reality around me trying to make me fall back asleep. When I look around and when I acknowledge what I am experiencing here, I realize that it is a lot of suppressed energy…human beings moving about their days, with the fear that they have to make all this money to exist, they have to possess all of these things to be doing it right, and they have to be a certain way in order to achieve all of this. This “way” is as a being that abides by the rules, without question. Does what they are told from the young age, beginning in school, and appeals to the mass ideal of beauty, and social standing. What I see, are people living their lives outside of their own heads. Following a path that has been created for them, not by them. I am not saying everyone should jump ship and go to Tofino. In fact, I think “Tofino” could be replaced with any location that fills you to the brim with wonder and love. A place where you are able to be your weird, fucked-up self, without the judgment. Being a human being on Earth may require that we have to work and we have to make money in order to sustain ourselves. But it doesn’t require us to surrender what we truly want and who we truly are, in order to reach that finish line. And hey, while we’re on the subject of finish lines, the inevitable one is coming for all of us. We will all die one day and leave this Earth as we presently know it. What Tofino taught me is that I do not have to make this huge imprint on the world, and be some celebrity or CEO in order to feel accomplished. All I have to do is get to the place inside of my own head where I feel and accept a love for myself and what I want, and this feeling-this energy-will be and is already, absorbed by those around me. I am helping others, by helping myself. And that’s my end goal. That’s what’s most real and dear to my heart…making a positive impact on the world around me. Fighting my way up to the top by manipulating and hoping for the destruction of another, (which is what we are subconsciously, or consciously, doing each time we try to sell a product by using against people what we know they cannot resist, because of the way society has shaped us, or not being genuinely happy for another who gets the higher-up position, because we are then falling behind), will only keep us back from finding what is real within our heads and hearts.

I think a lot of us already know this, and feel it somewhere unfamiliarly real within themselves. Taking the leap out of my comfort zone, and against the wishes of my parents was huge for me. Years of my life went by where I wanted to look like the ideal, I wanted to be smarter than everyone else and above all, I intensely feared being “the same” as the people around me, because that meant I wasn’t the best. Again, I find myself laughing while I am writing this because that want or desire was so silly of me. What I have realized is that I am the same as you. I am not unique, because that places me out of the spectrum of being a human being. We all struggle with the same fears and anxieties, and most all of us live in this world where things are NOT REAL. It is constructed for our beings by higher people in some sector of political, or governmental power. Whatever. The point is, what truly is real, and what will ultimately help me make it to the finish line feeling completely satisfied with the life I’ve lived, will be the undeniable higher power that rests within myself.

Sitting in the sand drawing pictures with the sun beating down on me, laughter surrounding my being, dreaming about how much I will love my future children, and how lovely my life will be, is the most real thing I have ever done. Not the years of schooling, hours of primping and all the money spent on truthfully useless products.

There’s a reason Tofino is known as “the end of the world.” Because in so many ways, it can be. Summer 2015 ended what I knew as the real world and who I knew as "Brooke Rogers." Though I will carry that self with me forever, she is separate from the being that I came out as on the other side. She is apart of me that is fearful, anxious, and spent many nights crying or feeling worthless over being judged, judging others, and not being enough. I love her a lot. But this new being feels so real and connected to who I will and am and have always been meant to be. She is, or I am, totally awake and aware of this path that I am walking on. At peace, with the turns and twists my life will take... and even excited for them. This new reality is what I choose to acknowledge as real. And though this life in Ontario will always surround me, I have found that which is beautifully raw and real within my head, and I can never and would never, wish to escape from this.