I didn't understand this quote for 20 years

I’ve been writing a lot for you lately.

I know…

Maybe because writing is my own way of processing.

I mean… it makes sense. My whole Substack is about the female body & the occasional existential spiral.

We know by now that this existential spiral shows up almost every month (thanks hormones & cycle).

Maybe yours looks different than mine. But you know the feeling.

But lately, there's been a lot more to process (feels like “spiraling on steroids”).

All things… this life, the people, my business, my insecurities, the chats with the women in my 🔗community, how they all connect and the ripple effect one has on each other. All of it.

I’ve always kept a journal. Actually I have so many journals. And in there, things get raw and messy. Sometimes I get scared of my own thoughts.

Writing helps me.

Writing literally creates space between your thoughts.

When you write, everything slows down. That’s the whole point. Your hands can’t keep up with a spiraling mind, so you’re forced to summarize, to choose, to actually process instead of just spinning.

So when everything feels too messy to untangle, I create that pocket of air for myself where I slow down.

Some people feel this state while meditating, painting, dancing… writing does the same for me.

Whatever your thing is, I hope you're protecting it and I hope you’re using it as much as you can.

Because right now, while I’m typing, there’s not a single other thought in my head.

It’s just me at my desk, my music in my headphones, (which thank God isolate every sound around me), my cup of matcha, and an empty salad box from lunch behind my laptop…

As I write this I’ve got my playlist on, a lot of Joel Sunny in it, violins, orchestra, the dramatic stuff 🤓 It pulls my thoughts out from the deep corners of my brain, and I want you to feel the same as you read. 🔗Give it a try??

I’m in my co-working space, surrounded by so many people.

But when I write, I see nobody. I hear nobody.

It’s just me, my keyboard, and you.

My brain felt tangled again today.

And instead of forcing myself to sit down for 2 hours and push through my tasks, I just sat down, pressed play on my playlist, and started writing.

I used to do this only in my private journals. Now I share so much more of it here, with you. Because I know it helps you too. You told me. It helps you make sense of what’s going on in your own life.

That loud head, where you can't even hear yourself think anymore.

This article turned into something bigger than my own mess, so stay with me.

Because I am convinced of one thing.

Nothing in this life is random.

When I was about 10 years old, I heard my uncle say once “everything happens for a reason”. I wrote it down and pinned it to the corkboard above my desk.

There were a few other quotes up there that I copied out of books. One of them I’ve never forgotten. This is in Romanian: “Adevărul nu face altceva decât să sfâşie vălul cu care se acoperă ochii ce nu vor să vadă realitatea” (Mihail Drumeș)

Let me try to translate it for you… (the closest I could get):

"Truth does one thing: it rips away the veil from eyes that refuse to face reality"

I pinned that thing on my wall at 10 years old!!!

I don’t think I understood a single word of it.

I saw it everyday until my early 20s, when I left my parents’ home. It was handwritten, on a scrap of paper torn out of my notebook. I even asked my mom last time I called her if she still has it. It must be somewhere in my childhood room.

I didn’t understand that quote for 20 years.

This week, I think I’m finally closer to understanding it.

Some messages stick in your head for a reason.

They wait… and they come back exactly when you’re ready to understand them.

Truth hurts.

I know I’ve kept you in a bit of a grey area about what’s actually going on in my life right now. I’ve kept it vague, because it’s still too personal for me to go fully naked about it.

But let’s just say… the veil I was looking at some people through was torn away.

Here’s how I’ve come to see it.

We look at the world through a curtain.

Picture yourself on a stage, just like the actor stands behind the curtain before it lifts.

You want to see the audience, so you make a tiny hole and you peek through it. And you see only as much as that little hole lets you.

You squint, you strain, you try to see more… but you can’t, because the hole is so small.

Until you find the courage to tear it wider.

And that tearing… that’s the part that hurts.

But once you do it, the hole grows.

More light comes through and slowly you stop squinting, because you don’t have to force it anymore.

You just see it.

You see it as it is.

Those holes you tear in the curtain, they’re your own insecurities.

You point them exactly where you want to look.

At the people, and the parts of people, that make you feel good in the moment… they make you feel SEEN, ALIVE, VALIDATED, CAPABLE.

And you miss everything else. Everything happening in the parts of the curtain you never bothered to look through.

(Oh boy, there is so much happening there…)

But you don’t see it, because you’re too busy standing at the one hole that gives you the feeling you’re chasing.

We do this because we need something.

We need something from someone, so we only look at the part of them that gives it.

We need a certain reassurance, so we look through that one hole that delivers it.

And underneath all of it… it’s almost always the same need.

Self worth.

That’s the confirmation we keep going back to the curtain for.

So, as I always say about everything…

You can reverse engineer it.

If looking through those tiny holes is how you borrow a fake sense of worth from the outside,

then the way out is to build a worth that doesn’t need the holes at all.

When you become someone whose worth doesn’t depend on people, places or situations… you will finally start seeing people as they are.

Not as you want them to be.

I’m reading 2 books right now that keep pointing me back to exactly this.

The Untethered Soul, which I mentioned in 🔗my previous article (it’s my favorite book of all times). And an audiobook I just started, I listen to it on the treadmill every morning, Metaphysical Millionaires.

Completely different angles, but somehow there’s a thread that connects them.

Here’s the thread through all of it: something shifts when you stop just looking, and start watching how you look.

So that’s the work I’m in right now.

Tearing my own curtain, making the holes bigger, even when it stings and learning to see people as they are, not as I needed them to be.

I’m observing the holes I created for myself because I needed people to be a certain way to fill my own needs.

It’s not comfortable.

Truth is not meant to be comfortable.

But there’s a sense of lightness underneath it.

And for the first time in a long time, I’m seeing things a lot more clearly.

Maybe you’re in your own version of this.

Maybe there’s a curtain you’re only just starting to tear.

If you are, I hope this reaches you at the right time.

That’s why I keep writing to you.

Love, Teo

PS: I'd love to know where this found you. Are you in your own version of this, tearing a curtain, squinting through a hole, building your worth back? Drop it below. I'm right here.