Messi-ness
What the GOAT š Can Teach Us About the Provisional Self and Our Luminous Identity
This past week I found myself watching Lionel Messi.
Not just watching him play.
Watching him.
There he was, wearing the famous sky blue and white stripes of Argentina š¦š·.
His captainās armband wrapped tightly around his left arm.
His boots laced up and covered with their signature flap.
Every movement purposeful.
Every touch of the ball recognizable.
In that moment he wasnāt simply Lionel Messi.
He was Messi, captain of Argentina.
A role.
A responsibility.
A calling.
A way of showing up in the world.
And then a thought quietly arrived.
Messi isnāt his jersey.
When the final whistle blows, the boots come off.
The captainās armband comes off.
The jersey is washed and hung out to dry before being folded away for another day.
The role ends.
Messi remains.
That simple image has become one of the clearest metaphors Iāve found for what the contemplative tradition has been trying to teach us for centuries.
Thomas Merton spoke of two selves.
Thomas Keating distinguished between our True Self and what he called the False Self.
My friend Hunter Mobley offers another beautiful phrase in his book Letting Go, Finding You. He calls it āyour relevant self.ā
I find myself drawn to another expression, not so much because we need yet another term hereāwe donāt!ābut because, like a finger pointing at the moon š , it points faithfully at something specific that Iām trying to highlight within my work with clients as a personal development coach.
The provisional self.
Not because it is bad.
Not because it is an illusion.
Not because it should be discarded.
But because it is wonderfully, necessarily, and beautifullyā¦ provisional.
Like a soccer jersey.
The provisional self is the naturally arising, protective, narrative sense of āmeā that develops as we learn to navigate this astonishing, volitile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.
It protects us.
It adapts.
It learns.
It specializes.
It prioritizes instincual concerns.
It gives us a name.
A profession.
A personality.
A preferred Enneagram strategy.
A family role.
A nationality.
A story.
It helps us play the particular game life has entrusted to us.
It is real.
It is important.
It deserves our gratitude.
But it cannot carry the weight of being the whole truth about who we are.
The difficulty begins when we mistake the jersey for the person wearing it.
Thomas Keatingās phrase āfalse selfā has been, and unfortunately continues to often be, misunderstood and thus ignored.
I donāt believe Thomas meant that this provisional, adaptive, thinking-feeling-sensing self is unreal, or ābadā/wrong in any moral sense.
Rather, Keating pointed out that this protective seperate-self sense of a solo āmeā developed in our own likeness quietly makes a false (i.e. not completely true) claim.
It wordlessly yet compellingly whispers:
āThis is all that you are.ā
That is the āmonumental illusionā of Keatingās āfalse self in action.ā
Our provisional (false) self becomes a problem only when it forgets it is provisional.
There is something larger.
Something older.
Something that was present before any role was assigned to us.
Before anyone praised us.
Before anyone rejected us.
Before success.
Before failure.
Before we learned to introduce ourselves.
My teacher Dan Siegel offers a word that has become increasingly meaningful to me.
MWe.
Me.
And We.
At the same time.
The āmeā of my own embodied experience.
The āweā of the countless relationships that have shaped my mind, my heart, and my life.
There never was a solo me.
There never was a solo you.
Just as there has never been a solo Messi.
His parents.
His grandmother.
His teammates.
His coaches.
His opponents.
His country.
His friendships.
His failures.
His victories.
All of these live within the person we simply call āMessi.ā
Perhaps we could even call itā¦
Messi-ness.
Not the statistics.
Not the trophies.
Not the jersey.
But the living mystery that no role could ever fully contain.
I wonder if something similar is true for each of us.
Perhaps beneath our provisional identities lives something luminous.
Not a better version of ourselves.
Not a perfected personality.
Not an improved ego.
But the spacious reality from which all our roles emerge and to which they eventually return.
This is not an invitation to reject the provisional self.
Quite the opposite.
Love your jersey.
Care for it.
Wear it well.
Play wholeheartedly.
Show up for your teammates.
Take your responsibilities seriously.
Just donāt confuse the jersey with the One wearing it.
One day Lionel Messi will play his final match.
The boots will be untied.
The captainās armband folded away.
The Argentina jersey number 10 with 3 stars āļø āļø āļø (will it be four š¤ after this World Cup?) on it will hang in a museum.
None of those things will disappear because Messi has disappeared.
They will disappear because they were never the deepest truth about him.
They were beautiful expressions.
Necessary expressions.
Temporary expressions.
The contemplative journey is much the same.
It is not learning to despise the jersey.
It is learning never to confuse it with the One wearing it š
š Reflection
If your provisional self is like a recognizable jersey you wear to play the game of lifeā¦
Who is the One wearing it?
And what might become possible if, even for a few moments today, you rested not in your role, but in your luminous āMessi-nessā?
What if the Messi-ness of it all, this incredible flowing unity containing chaos-and-order, is our deepest human identity?
In Closing
2 food-for-thought quotes to contemplate + something that I hope will make you chuckleā¦
The primary issue for the human family at its present level of evolutionary development is to become fully human. But that, as we have seen, means rediscovering our connectedness to God, which was repressed somewhere in early childhood.
-Thomas Keating
Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement.
-Shunryu Suzuki
Do a great week yāall and godspeed to all the teams and their World š Cup campaigns!
ā¦aaaand last but not leastā¦
PS.š youāre welcome and Iām sorry š
This made me smile. Thanks, Logan! Messi-ness indeed. š