Mirrors

So many years have passed since my brothers and I were magicians, chasing dragons in the backyard. Since Jess sat on my bed at college for long, utterly-filled hours ruminating on the nature of love and existence and meaning. And now, suddenly, I find myself in my middle thirties ruminating on the rapidity of time’s passage and the growing of my children. I meet with friends from a decade ago, before the marriage and the mortgage and the kids and I see myself reflected in their eyes as I once was. And it strikes me that in any given present, we can’t know the full extent of who we are; we gaze perpetually in a mirror, using the sunlight and the angle to our advantage (or disadvantage) so that the human we see is never a true representation.  I have used that reflection to torture and flatter, to destroy and to create entire storylines about who I have been or am becoming. All along, the truth was probably somewhere halfway between. Or, perhaps, something I could never have conceived of in the first place.

The last couple years of my life have been filled with waves of regret and self-doubt.  Undoubtedly, it has been a time of transition and newness. New friends and a new home and new jobs and the utter interruption of what had become a very comfortable norm. It is only through the power of retrospect and perspective that I have come to embrace the idea that trusting my own instinct, even that of the human I once was, is essential. Given the same exact circumstances, pressures, and desires, I am willing to bet I would take precisely the same action. Torturing oneself with the benefit of hindsight is a particularly cruel pastime. And one, at least in this season, that I have come to embrace as particularly destructive and unhelpful in achieving growth.

It is certainly a cliché that each mistake we make guides us on a journey toward understanding. And yet, I find every grueling moment of heartbreak and uncertainty has led to essential insight into who I am and where, ultimately, I’d like to be. And it most certainly would have been folly to stay still. The worst thing of all, perhaps, is to avoid growth and change because it is painful. I find myself in a new community surrounded by new people who go through life and their jobs and their tasks in entirely different ways and I am better for the challenge. My assumptions are not being enforced by an echo chamber of people who are nearly identical to me and I find myself humbled by the limits of my own knowledge. I am better, certainly, for finding I can be so very, very wrong. For finding that I can be so very, very new and naïve and young in my approach to living.

Having been the subject of some cruelty and gossip and drama in the utter uprooting of my life, I have also experienced significant empathy for those who have walked a similar path prior. My own cruel or scathing or thoughtless comments about others have come to mind and I (rightfully so) regretted them and wished (rightfully so) I had paused before casting judgment. Feeling such deep sorrow over the loss of friends, community, jobs, and things I have loved has made me a kinder human and that, in and of itself, was worth all the turmoil.

It is a reminder, I think, never to grow too comfortable or too complacent. And what a boon the age of technology is; we can be in perpetual movement and strive toward greater and new challenges without the loss of those we have come to hold dear along the way. And it strikes me that relationships which are most integral and essential to the functioning of our own soul never really change over time; last night I had the privilege of meeting with two very old, very dear friends who I had not seen for far too long. Their entry into my life was unchanged from what it was a decade ago – there were more wrinkles, certainly, but the affection and knowing of one another remained utterly intact and the laughter is—and probably always will be—utterly the same.

And so I find the challenge of this season of my life is to abhor with every fiber of my being complacency – to embrace the new and the challenging and the things that shake me. To embrace pain and loss and sorrow and view the demolition of who I have been as the opportunity for the development of traits that make me kinder and bigger and more loving. That which stays the same, it seems to me, is necessarily artificially contrived. And while stasis is essential in some arenas of life (it seems a necessary component for any kind of career or financial stability), it should be very heavily balanced with a willingness to be uncomfortable, to disrobe the burden and expectation of the status quo in favor of change and rebirth.