What is a Good Life? #74
What is a Good Life? #74
Holding The Light & The Shadow with Dee Mulrooney
On the 74th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Dee Mulrooney. Dee is a multi-disciplinary Irish artist. Inhabiting a female body, mythical imagination and story as medicine are the main preoccupations of her work. Exile, class, displacement, social history, longing, and belonging are some of the themes explored by Dee through painting, drawing, film, storytelling, and performance. Dee works with the alchemical aspect of transmutation in her art, using this process to deal with difficult topics including abuse, death, and loss.
In this glorious conversation, Dee shares with us her journey towards greater purpose, self-acceptance, and more wholeness in her being. A path that included joining and leaving a cult, moving her family from Dublin to Berlin, giving birth to herself once more through her experience of menopause, accepting her own nature, and the process of transmuting her pain and torment into art and expression. Throughout this conversation, she never looks away from the pain humans create nor lets go of hope or appreciation for life.
Dee is someone who I see as fiercely engaged with both the great joys and depths of sorrow in life. If you are too attached to the light in life, perhaps this conversation invites you more into the shadow, and vice versa, ultimately giving you a sense of a greater wholeness that is possible within us.
The weekly clip from the podcast (4 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (61 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
In the clip above, Dee shares her experience of coming into greater acceptance of herself, specifically in terms of her anxious nature. Her process aligns with how I feel I have found greater peace in my own life.
If we look at our society as a whole, I don’t feel it’s too much of a generalisation to say that we are obsessed with trying to better ourselves, usually in line with a generic and predetermined idea of what "better" is—an idea that is often sold to us, rather than one that translates to a better-felt experience of life.
Recently, I’ve noticed that even when people acknowledge their contentment, they can still list things they feel they need to do. “You seem really content today.” “Yes, but I still need to figure out my career, where I am going to live, etc.”
This reminds me of something I wrote about before, where I could compliment someone: “You are doing an amazing job as a parent.” “Thanks, but I need to get back in the gym too.” My head is left spinning by the speed of the deflection of the compliment.
It’s as if we struggle to fully appreciate how we are feeling or what we have done because we, or society, have created this fictional list to carry around constantly, highlighting where we are “lacking” at any given moment.
I am not saying we shouldn’t think about our lives or the future implications of our actions. We will always do this to some degree; it’s what the mind does. But this also supports the point I am about to make.
Whether it’s our evolutionary biology, family behaviour through multiple generations, the culture and country we were raised in, the environment we grew up in, the life experiences we’ve had, or how influential the first seven years of our lives are over which we had little control, we are mostly who we are.
In fact, as a past guest said, we are the perfect expression of everything we have ever been through.
There is some nonsense sold in self-development circles that essentially says, “Any flaws you perceive you have can be pulled out at the roots, allowing you to become the ultimate version of a human.”
However, this version of what a human can be ends up not being very human at all. What human doesn’t have fear, doesn’t feel insecure every so often, doesn’t judge others, or feel shame? These ideas mostly get in the way of loving what already is.
You cannot be anything you want to be in this sense; you will still be a human. But the greatest thing you can be is all of who you are, and being okay with that is honestly one of life’s greatest gifts.
You may still go on to achieve what we consider great things, or you may slow down and appreciate what you already have. Either way, accepting yourself will determine how you feel more than the external appearance of your life.
Oscar Wilde once said, “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.” This highlights the tragedy in much of the self-development nonsense, which diminishes who and what we are, implying that we are not special unless...
However, simply being you makes you one of the 110 billion people that have apparently ever existed. What else could you strive for, whether a state of being or an external goal, that could put you in such a rarefied position of uniqueness?
One of my favourite spiritual teachers, Ram Dass, who was also a psychology professor at Harvard, then explored psychedelics, found a guru in India, meditated extensively, fasted for long periods, stayed silent for extended periods, wrote best-selling books, and spoke extensively to crowds of people.
Whatever your morning routine or processes are, there is a high probability he did it far more extensively. In one talk, he mentioned that after 40 years of all these efforts, “I don’t think I have changed one of my neuroses.”
He was a funny guy, so the group of seekers he was speaking to didn’t know if this was a joke or not, and it was met with hushed gasps and hopeful laughter.
He went on to say that his relationship with who he is has changed. When he recognises these energies within him, he has learned how to greet them, not rush them along or hush them out.
When I first heard this eight years ago, I thought he was wrong and wasn’t willing to go all the way. Whenever I listen to that sentiment more recently, I understand what he means.
We are complicit in the immature delusion that we can somehow make ourselves pure, free of all flaws, and that if we don’t “fix” ourselves, it is due to a lack of effort rather than accepting the truth of what it is to be human, what it is to be me.
While in reality, the awareness and acceptance of who we are bring about profound change in our lives, in our relationship with ourselves, and with the world around us. This likely yields the sense of fulfilment we hope the eradication of our flaws would provide.
Otherwise, we will most likely repeat the cycle of trying to willpower ourselves into something we are not, discrediting who we are in the process, and burning out while pretending we have fundamentally changed or feel life differently, while those around us can still sense the tension and resistance we carry.
Whether our world rewards you for the willpower you exert or not, you know whether you feel truly content or not, or whether you like or love yourself or not.
Which makes me think of a final quote to leave you with, that may or may not tie in nicely with what I have written, by Eric Hoffer, “You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.”
It can all be much simpler than we make it. I promise.
3. Full Episode - Holding The Light & The Shadow - What is a Good Life? #74
Click here for Apple and Amazon
4. This week’s Questions
What if you simply are who you are, how can you accept what you are right now?
In how you are presently perceiving life, do you sense you are overly attached to light or shadow?
About Me
I am a Coach based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I left behind a 15-year career in Capital Markets after I became extremely curious around answering some of the bigger questions in life. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed around 200 people, to provide people with the space to reflect on their own lives and to create content that would spark people’s own inquiry into this question. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience, beyond the facades we typically project.
If you would like to work with me to explore your own lines of self-inquiry, experiences I create to stimulate more meaningful group conversations and connection, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.