My story
We meet at a certain stage of my journey and although all is still open, some tides are starting to emerge that draw me more strongly than the others. And as I have always been more interested in what drives the actual facts than the facts themselves, the following is first and foremost about these undercurrents that carry me forward.
It was clear from the beginning – and looks the same today – that what I enjoy the most is being in motion. They could not sit me down when I was one year old, and there is no reason to believe that I have a need to stop now, after nearly forty years of fidgeting in life.
This naturally went hand in hand with continual seeking after changes, searching for new places, people and circumstances. Everything that would also evoke a “movement” inside, that would stir and reorganise my world.
To a great extent, it is this drive that marked out my weird-looking trajectory ‒ which in practice took the form of shorter or longer spells in Great Britain, Czech Republic, Israel and most of the major Polish cities. Just to experience the unknown. Learn another person’s life story, spend time in a world different from my own and emerge transformed. What from the outside seems like wandering, was for me ‒ and still is ‒ a way home, one continually being built inside.
Stepping out of the familiar and across new worlds was at the same time stepping away – from the ways of living suggested by those around. Perhaps due to my upbringing in an environment of strong faith in certain unchanging truths, for balance, a strong reflex appeared of questioning the status quo. With time, I took more and more liking to standing aside while looking at the things we believe. So even until today, a change of perspective is definitely the most enjoyable of all the changes I zealously practice.
Add to that a strong need for independence and moving through life at your own pace and it’s not hard to guess that I swiftly land on the margin of most social groups. The cost of that is, and will most likely remain to be, an inherent difficulty to truly belong anywhere. The benefit is – and will also hopefully remain – that I always place myself and others where it is easier to see both the surrounding reality and our own selves in a different way. Which, as a result, allows one to choose an entirely different way of going forward.
To trace in this story an underlying difficulty in accepting things the way they are would not be a wrong guess. The need to continuously discover how I can live differently and who I can become has originated from another need – to change myself into a different, better someone. This deeply wounding refusal of myself has only recently started to evolve into acceptance. And attempting to live in a way worth living despite internal limitations.
This would not be possible but for one of the most liberating changes that I choose, with effort, to practice every day – that from a victim of circumstances into their originator. Literally an ongoing proces of deciding which one of the two I want to be. And this is where we are slowly approaching the reason why I do what I do – the way I do it.
To really connect these dots, I must confess that for most of my life I have expected that what I want will come to me by itself. I realised fairly late that the shape of my professional life depends on me only. And it is chiefly my own effort that brings it nearer to the life that I want for myself. That’s why my search for a profession has been a reluctunt wandering around, with many failed attempts to find a compromise between pragmatic necessity to survive and dreaming about a job that would mean something. For me personally: one that would help people change their reality into something closer to what they desire.
And so, as nothing in life is set in stone, here too, there is no ultimate answer to find. There is, however, unceasing effort to arrive at the right balance, best suited for me in the present moment. Enough to have peace and strength to do the things I care about. In spite of ever-present uncertainty, reconciling the need to explore and expand with the need to feel good where I am, doing what I do – right now.
And as I do not believe that anyone has that answer for me, on who I should be and how I should live, I don’t try to find these answers for others. A deep conviction that we are the only ones who can find them for ourselves – tailored to our needs and measure – makes me best serve others by creating a space where this process of searching and choosing is easier. The space and time for evoking in each person I work with their own courage and potential – enabling them to carve out and make their way to where they want to be and who they want to become.
The fact that I can spend my daily “eight hours” accompanying people on longer and shorter stages of their journeys, supporting them in facing change and using it to become stronger in uncertainty – is for me a source of huge joy and a reason for deep gratitude. At the same time, a perfect opportunity for enriching exchange and ongoing discovery of how things can be done better. And so, this route turns out to be a circle along which many tangents continually meet.