I think that we're all waiting to be transformed into something else but in fact the luckiest of us are the people who realize that this is it. And that to honor our dreams and to honor our loved ones and to honor our rituals and our lives is precisely what literature is endlessly trying to teach us. That this is the moment. And that we are happy and immortal only insofar as we know and notice that.
~Allan Gurganus, interview in Naomi Epel's Writers Dreaming
"Waiting to be transformed..."
It's a profound moment when one realizes that this is it, you are it, who you are, now. There is not a better you that you will become just around the next corner. No magic moment or seminal day when you will be THAT person, the one you feel you could be, will be, "once" and "if only."
This isn't to say that you won't evolve because you have to. Or maybe you don't "have to", but you will anyway. And you may evolve because of what you gain, but more likely it will be because of what you lose.
And this has nothing to do with whether you believe there is a Heaven or not. It has to do with how you embrace what you have and who you are here and now. Being accountable to today. Being honest and courageous enough to face the full truth that this, right now, this person you are, is who you have become.
There is tremendous grace in that. Terrifying and tremendous grace.
OK Laura, I'm all for self-acceptance and living in the present, but this disturbs me. It seems to say that it is impossible for us to move by choice from Point A to Point B -- from the people we are to the people we might want to be -- and that there's no point in trying. Is that what you really meant?
Posted by: Peter | August 26, 2009 at 08:39 AM
Oh gosh no! Thanks for asking for the clarification.
In an odd way, this ends up suggesting just the opposite. In my life, as well as in my line of work, I have seen quite a number of people focus so heavily on the future that they miss today entirely. Worse yet, for many life is lived so in the head that the disconnect between what one envisions one to be, or one to be becoming, is so disparate from their life as it is actually lived that they end up crippling their true progress toward that vision.
I had a friend who said once, "there is a difference between having a theory of breathing and actually breathing." If the focus is so heavily on who one will be after the tranformation, which could mean when one gets to Heaven, or one gets the promotion, or one's web presence hits the tipping point, or whatever it might be, there can be something insidiously detrimental in that because there is an element of passivity.
Self-transformation vs. The Big Break. And I see a lot of people who hope for the big break without sincerely putting in the work to earn it.
That's a whole other discussion actually...how fearful people have become of investing themselves in what they feel a passion for because they want guarantees that it will work. So, in the grips of that, the dream sort of hangs around...I'm going to be a writer, photographer, inventor, wife, husband,business owner, you name it, someday but the qualities of character which will be required to do that successfully aren't really being expressed today.
Unless you see and accept and have enough self-love to clearly see yourself with some understanding and compassion, you'll never cultivate yourself to the person you'll feel worthy of the efforts you will need to make.
Posted by: Laura | August 26, 2009 at 09:01 AM
Let me give an example for an aspect of this:
Lots of people out there have had a goal, typically with every new year or birthday passed, of losing 10 or 15 pounds. And they don't. They may have had the same goal for 10 years straight. I think that is very common but for a million reasons they just don't achieve it. Doesn't mean they can't or shouldn't try but it just never quite happens.
I think there is a world of difference between being that person who is trying to lose that weight, again, or still, and one who looks in the mirror one day and says, "This is my body. I'm not going to take that weight off. I don't care enough about it, REALLY, to do what it takes to get rid of it. It's staying. THIS is what I look like. This is me. I'm going to buy clothes that fit THIS body, whatever size those clothes happen to be." And you buy the clothes and they look a million times better and feel a million times better than the carrot on the stick clothing you have been torturing yourself with for the last decade. You allow yourself to be comfortable, maybe for the first time, in your own skin (literally).
I'm not advocating for an unhealthy lifestyle but any means. But you are either pursuing that sincerely or not so I'm just saying be honest. Let that fantasy go that you never really were pursuing with any sincerity and you just see how that feels, to accept that you aren't going to maximize your potential in every life area.
Sounds, you know, a bit antithetical for a coach to say, but there it is.
Sometimes letting dreams go...what it will be like when you finally get to kiss the girl, run a marathon, climb Kilimanjaro, fit into a size 6, can be life affirming. To sit in sincere appreciation of what one has right here and now. To appreciate one's home, one's possessions, one's family, friends, one's physical attibutes and capabilities. All of those things we take for granted by wishing for more.
It's asking the question, honestly, "If this, who I am today, is truly who I am, can I love that person? If this, what I have today, were all I were allowed to acquire for the next week, month, year, would this be enough for me? What is enough? Where else had I been hoping to go?"
Deep questions.
Posted by: Laura | August 26, 2009 at 10:41 AM
Ahhh... "Self-transformation vs. The Big Break" I get it.
Posted by: Peter | August 26, 2009 at 10:53 AM
me, too; or I feel near a tipping point. Thanks for the conversation, Laura & Peter.
Posted by: Kate | August 29, 2009 at 05:52 PM
Glad to have you along, my dear...
Posted by: Laura | September 01, 2009 at 04:38 PM