“Why didn’t you immediately like him?” I asked.
“He was just really chalant…
… like you.”
My then seventeen-year-old cousin explained quietly with a subtle ick-ness in relation to my second-degree line of questioning around how she and her then boyfriend ended up together.
For starters, because I don’t spend much time on the part of the internet where new words are invented every millisecond, I had no idea that chalant was, in fact, an internet term, not just something she made up on the spot.
“What is… chalant??”
“The opposite of nonchalant.”
Thus ensued a new line of questioning to uncover what she actually meant by ‘chalant.’
Here’s what I gathered: chalant is obviously caring; visibly trying or efforting; and being unabashedly interested.
(Chalant is probably also, in my case, having a loud Italian voice with fast-moving hands, an inexhaustible interest in other humans, and a Leslie Knope-esque relationship to one's schedule.)
Almost a year since this conversation, I’m in what one might call a ~chalant reclamation~
We come into the world with pure facets of who we are.
(And simultaneously, we don’t. We arrive with ‘stuff’—before we’ve even get started.)
Life unfolds with intelligence. The pain we experience often correlates perfectly with authentic parts of who we are (and the aforementioned stuff).
What’s there to heal mixes with something real.
* Fawning or people-pleasing mixes with sensitivity, empathy and compassion.
* Perfectionism and punishment mix with a sincere love of doing things well.
* Confusion and chaos mix with an iridescent imagination and natural artistry.
When you’re committed to transformation —to showing up for yourself and Life as you find them—you may tend to expect the work.
Like anything you meet, over time, density releases; non-linear progress happens; what was once gross disappears, and what was once subtle becomes gross.
You may have grown used to clearing survival energies, and be surprised when, one day, you realize you’ve been relaxed in your being for weeks now, amid circumstances that would’ve definitely thrown a past version of you off.
This is new.
What happens when the experience of ‘something’ is no longer largely focused on transforming it, but on engaging with and exploring the raw energy?
(Caveat: most of the time, there will always be more, more to clear and transform. But, don’t let this diminish the idea of reaching a point where what was once something you related to as ~trauma~ has become what was underneath—a pure essence.)
I’ve been experiencing a newfound relationship to intensity (chalant-ness?) where I’ve caught myself expecting something to be running that needs my attention.
I’ve been around the block too many times to think intensity doesn’t belong here.
But, I grew used to it arriving with an onslaught of energies that always carried some sort of psychic debt (unprocessed rage, survival energies, dissociation).
If I didn’t meet what came with it, I was left feeling a bit far from myself.
Yet, this time—a jewel.
Just intensity. In its essence.
A white-hot fire that imbues everything.
What happens when this energy can move unencumbered?
(In this iteration, a complete loss of any past excuses giving way to waking up at 5am to lift weights and deciding to run a marathon all whilst taking care of a nine-month old and running this here business.
It's what 2020 might have called, unprecedented 🦤)
My cousin was right.
Underneath it all, I am chalant.
