the business of finding ourselves

The Business of Finding Ourselves

Reflections from Bali — Part One

Today I find myself sitting in a rather extraordinary place in Bali. My young travelling companion has brought me to a sound healing experience held inside enormous pyramid-shaped buildings. Not ancient pyramids, of course, but purpose-built structures designed to create an atmosphere of spirituality, healing and perhaps something approaching transcendence.

There are sessions throughout the day and into the evening, with as many as fifty people attending each one. And I find myself as fascinated by the people who have come here as I am by the experience itself.

I am watching.

There are young women, couples, groups of friends, people in their thirties and forties, and perhaps a few older. But I can’t see anyone who looks to be my age.

There is a lot of white clothing. Beautiful, flowing fabrics, carefully considered outfits, and of course the inevitable photographs and videos being taken. Instagram moments, I imagine.

A few minutes ago, I wandered into the bathroom and encountered a beautiful young blonde woman, slim and exquisitely dressed in white satin shorts and a little crop top. She was standing in front of the mirror, adjusting herself, admiring herself, making sure everything looked just right.

And something about that small moment stayed with me.

Here we are, in a place dedicated to healing, self-discovery and going within, and yet the external presentation of ourselves seems as important as ever.

Perhaps more important than ever.

I find myself thinking about what it must be like to be a young woman today.

When I was in my twenties and thirties, we certainly had expectations placed upon us. We were expected to be attractive, slim, desirable, and to conform in so many ways to what men and society wanted us to be. We were hardly free of judgement or pressure.

But we didn’t have social media.

We didn’t have to constantly document ourselves, curate our lives, or present an image of happiness, beauty, success and spiritual fulfilment to an invisible audience.

And I wonder whether, despite all the progress women have made, some of those old expectations have simply been repackaged.

Perhaps the pressure to be beautiful has become the pressure to be beautiful and spiritually evolved. To have the perfect body, the perfect lifestyle, the perfect emotional awareness, the perfect sense of inner peace.

Even healing, it seems, has acquired an aesthetic.

And then there is the industry itself.

Everywhere in Bali there are retreats, healing experiences, breathwork sessions, sound journeys, ceremonies, spiritual workshops and promises of transformation.

People are paying considerable amounts of money to participate in experiences designed, at least in part, to help them reconnect with themselves.

And I keep coming back to a question.

What is it that so many people are searching for?

Looking around me, I don’t see an overwhelming sense of joy or excitement. Of course, appearances tell us very little about another person’s inner world, and perhaps I am reading too much into what I see. But there is something about the atmosphere that makes me wonder whether many of the people here are carrying a quiet sense of longing.

A need for something.

Connection? Belonging? Peace? Relief from anxiety? Permission to stop striving? A sense that their lives have meaning beyond the relentless demands of modern living?

As a psychotherapist, I understand the human need to find relief from emotional suffering. I understand the longing to feel safe, grounded, connected and whole.

And I am certainly not dismissing the value of experiences that help people slow down, become present, or reconnect with themselves. I have spent much of my own life exploring these very things.

But I am intrigued by the extraordinary commercial industry that has grown around this longing.

There is something almost paradoxical about being told that everything we need is already within us, while simultaneously being offered an endless succession of experiences we can purchase to help us find it.

When did finding ourselves become something we needed to buy?

And is the wellness industry responding to a genuine epidemic of emotional vulnerability, or is it also, perhaps unintentionally, reinforcing the idea that we are somehow incomplete without its offerings?

I don’t know.

Perhaps both things are true.

There is another dimension to all of this for me, too.

I am turning seventy, and travelling with a much younger woman whose interests, experiences and ways of seeing the world are naturally different from mine.

I came here partly because she wanted to experience these things, and I wanted to share them with her. Having travelled independently for most of my life, there is something rather lovely about allowing someone else to lead me into unfamiliar territory.

But it has also made me acutely aware of the distance between generations.

At times I am reminded of how old I am.

And at other times, I feel no age at all.

I find myself observing not only the people around me but my own reactions to them. My curiosity, my scepticism, my assumptions, and perhaps even the ways in which my own generation’s experiences have shaped what I believe to be meaningful.

I don’t want to become someone who dismisses what younger people are seeking simply because their methods are unfamiliar to me.

After all, every generation has searched for meaning, belonging and a way to ease the discomfort of being human.

Perhaps what has changed is not the search itself, but the marketplace that has grown around it.

And perhaps what troubles me most is the possibility that we are becoming increasingly disconnected from ourselves while living in a world that offers us endless opportunities to purchase reconnection.

I have yet to experience the sound healing session itself. Perhaps it will surprise me. Perhaps I will feel something profound. Perhaps I will simply enjoy lying quietly in a beautiful space, listening to sounds wash over me.

I am open to that.

But right now, sitting here watching this extraordinary gathering of people, I find myself wondering about the emotional lives of younger generations, the enormous industry that has emerged to support them, and whether we have somehow turned the very human search for peace into yet another form of consumption.

There is much more I want to think about.

And perhaps, at seventy, I am discovering that one of the great privileges of getting older is not having all the answers, but feeling increasingly free to question the things everyone else seems to accept.

To be continued…

Karen 💕