Growing pains
Would you believe that growth comes with growing pains? You don’t experience new or different moments without change and you cannot control how that change affects you. However, there is always a choice in how you respond: either you choose to participate accordingly in receiving that change, whether good or bad, or you choose to remain complacent under those circumstances.
I think the phrase we often use to describe these moments of emotional tyranny and high-tension decisions is “when it rains, it pours.” Recently, as part of an inevitable cycle, it was my turn to endure a season of heavy rain. Although I had been preparing for it, you never quite know whether it’s sink or swim until you're in the thick of it. While we acknowledge that seasons are fleeting and everything ebbs and flows, we can still mourn what will no longer be or wonder what rebirth will come - from hard earned efforts, relationships good, bad, or ugly, and the time or money invested in whatever you gave yourself to.
What are our dreams if they don’t come with a cost, or some kind of investment that adds value or importance to the work and sacrifice? The things, people, and joys we love. The recognition, drive, ambition, and inclusivity we desire. To be deeply known is our deepest and utmost needed truth as humans. But what if the things we deeply desire or the things that require self-centric drive to accomplish are actually our greatest obstacle to the greater purpose of our creation?
Do I struggle with letting go of my heart and soul's desires? Yes, greatly. Do I know and accept that my heart is faulted? Yes. Have my deepest desires and dreams ever changed course? All the time. There are lives I have had to let go of this year. There are vocations of my life I’ve chosen to let go of and have chosen to place second. Growth has growing pains. While there is mourning, there is great joy.
We live in a culture that is firmly cultivating a healthy crop of individualistic success and validation of personal truths. But have you thought about the brokenness in our own thinking and beliefs? This borders the universalism that all people have their own truth, but without that, where is the absolute while that belief is also being an absolute? It doesn’t entertain the notion that one truth can oppose another - literally abolishing the definition of truth itself.
Just me? Maybe not.
Does my upcoming year look different to what I had planned? Yes. Will there be great growth, I bet. Will the transition be hard? Temporarily - but like all things there will be adaptation and recovery.
What is changing, you say? My studio practice is going to look a little different next year, and in the changes I am eager for some fresh starts and anticipation of the next chapter. And there will be more to come on that soon.
