7. The World Also Changes

To be open to the world is to embrace all of its parts. It is to accept these parts not as separate possessions but as new components of my own being. Everything I allow to live in me also lives through me. I grow with every new addition. I am transformed into something other than what I already am.

I am no longer one, but many. I am a fragmented entity, made up of the parts I have embraced. The fragments that are me are not in harmony with each other, and this means there is tension. Tension arises internally, in the shifting entanglement of the various parts alive inside me, and externally, in my interactions with other people. There are limitations to what I can become because I cannot abandon my responsibility to others. I cannot allow myself to become a monster.

Being multiple is never easy. Not only do I face questions about my own identity, I also have to pay attention to how my changing self impacts the people around me. Still, I must be multiple because it means living more broadly than I otherwise would. It means experiencing things I otherwise would not. This is how I grow. This is how I become more aware of the world that is, and how I become more sensitive to its needs and pains. It is how I further embody life in all its dimensions. Life, that complex and courageous existence of which I am a part.

Through fragmentation I gradually become more whole. I do this by including more and more parts of the world into my existence, and by living through those parts. It is in both being and responding to that which was other that I become more myself. My growth is growth into the world, and when I change, the world also changes.