Monday 16 December 2013

Old Dogs and New Tricks (No, this isn't a dog story!)

When time is measured differently - when the finite nature of life becomes real - one still makes mistakes - it is true - but one can also learn things - see things in ways one may have not contemplated before. And what I see most powerfully right now is how the things we hold secret - from ourselves - from the people we love - from the larger community we work and interact with - drives a wedge between us and the world. A chasm that grows deeper and wider - makes traversing it to some kind of intimate connection less probable - sometimes unachievable. What we can't bring ourselves to share - entrenches a kind of false reality - until all that echoes is that disappointed voice in your head - the isolation that creeps around that place in your heart where secrets live. As painful as it has been for me personally to release so many of these pieces into the universe - looking them square in the eye - facing all of my weaknesses and owning up to them - has been the most transformative experience of my life. Knowing that people in my life are very clear about all of these elements and have not abandoned me...just held me closer and closer.
My mom once told me a story and while I am fuzzy on all of the details - the moral was that it is the failings - the elements of ourselves that we find hardest to look at that are in some ways the most beautiful things about us - the things that build our character - our empathy and humanity - and that it is the imperfections that inspire the greatest love. I see that now in a way I never really appreciated before - a lesson it was not too late to absorb - not too late to feel.

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