Growing pains

"Surprisingly, we fear our potential greatness almost as much as our present weakness... fear that if we grew into our greatness we would be very different people...all would be new and unfamiliar because real growth involves movement from the known into the unknown. We would have to give up our old familiar myths and stories... to die to one story, one myth, in order to be reborn to a larger one."

-- Roger Walsh, Essential Spirituality

Driving home after my interview yesterday, I had this curious sense that I was about to explode; that something great within me was about to burst its bonds and come into being. It wasn't exactly a comfortable feeling -- a little exciting, a little scary -- and some other part of me was working overtime to tame it, to loosen those bonds enough to allow the greatness to expand without breaking anything -- mostly by intellectualizing the experience; essentially "talking me down."

So when I saw this quote this morning, there was a sense of recognition, and a bit of wonder: how many times in my life have I had the chance to be more, and, out of false modesty or fear of rejection tamped it down, reduced the voltage, pulled back, afraid of overwhelming myself and others with the magnitude?

When I looked for an image to illustrate that, this one -- taken Sunday, just before we boarded the ferry to come home from Shaw -- leaped up. I had taken it for the colors, but now, looking at it, it had that swelling, bursting of bonds, and at the same time tied-down feeling. But of course it's not exploding at all -- it's just a life jacket: well-used, to be sure, but designed expressly to keep us afloat when we go overboard.

It's okay, I see now; it's all okay: the sense of something new coming, the excitement, the anxiety, the gentle damping down -- it's all a part of the buoyancy that comes when the spirit is moving and the winds are blowing and the boat is starting to rock. We have some time-tested responses that keep us balanced, and if, as we age, we continue to grow, it makes sense that we'll have to loosen those bonds a little.

And -- just as an aside -- I find it really interesting, that this quote, especially the parts at the end, about dying to be reborn, so closely mirrors the themes in yesterday's poem, which was written before I left for the interview. Which amuses me because I struggled with the pronouns in the poem, couldn't figure out who I was saying goodbye/farewell to: was it a guy? Was it a girl, a child? And now I see that there's another option: maybe I'm saying goodbye to another phase in my own life.

And it's all good.