It occurred to me the other day as I was walking the dog through the paths in my neighbourhood - a good time to be contemplative - that most of our lives are spent growing and changing for the next phase. We never really get to 'rest on our laurels' or 'arrive!"
As a child you are becoming a talker, a walker, a kindergartener. Then: a reader, a speller, a writer. Some of us become athletes; others become bookworms. We become minor niners and progress onwards until we become seniors. We become thinkers and analyzers and (especially in the teen years) feelers, worriers, lovers. Along the way we become friends, and many of us become sisters or brothers.
Then comes the serious stuff! We become adults! We think we have arrived at some important destination. We can vote, drink legally, drive, get married. We become taxpayers... renters... perhaps even home owners. And it is only from the perspective of the next decade that we look back on our 20's and think: Oh my! Did I ever change! And thus it is with each subsequent decade: we look back and realize we became a whole lot of different things during the previous decade, and a lot of it was unexpected.
But there is a deeper "becoming" that I have begun to discern. Maybe it is merely my own personal circumstances, my own puzzling out of the un-knowable, of trying to find meaning in the 'stuff' of life. Or maybe it is a fundamental aspect to our lives on this plane of existence. It seems to me that there is a "becoming" happening at a core level, and that this becoming is to become more and more yourself.
I am not who I was 10 years ago... and not who I will be 10 years from now. But, am I wise enough to gather up these 5 decades of becoming this and that (daughter, sister, mother, wife, lover, thinker, reader, worker, boss, woman!) and knit it all together? I don't know.
Sometimes I feel like I am re-learning old lessons, not learning new ones. Other times, the feeling is a circular one, or perhaps a mobius strip. I realize that sounds weird, so let me explain: There are periods of my life that I feel I am getting BACK to something I knew before - or that I "was" before. I felt that way after my separation and divorce, the path to which began with an internal commitment to re-claim my"self"... long lost through the demands of being a wife and mother, among other roles! It is this feeling that resonated with so many women in the book Bridges of Madison County when Francesca admits to Robert Kincaid that she doesn't know who she is anymore, that she lost it somewhere along the way.
We do lose ourselves from time to time; if we're lucky, we remember enough to recognize ourselves again somewhere down the road. I have looked in the mirror recently - now that I have lost more than 100 pounds - and have felt that resonating exclamation in my heart and soul: THERE you are again! We've missed you!
There is something so comforting about thinking of myself as a mobius strip... and that no matter how far out I go in learning and experiencing life, in the end, I come back to the very essence of my self. Wisdom comes from the lessons you learn on the way around the loop, as you circle around life's triumphs and tragedies, as you learn to trust and love, as you learn WHO to trust and love, as you discover your own strength and how to be gentle with your own frailty. At some point, you come back to yourself. And that's a good thing.
I am becoming me. Over and over again.
Ruth ver 5.3
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