When my grandmother died, my dad gave me a beautiful ceramic platter of hers that I loved; shaped like a lily pad, with a frog perched on the edge, it was lighter than air and I constantly worried about something happening to it. After a year of storing it somewhat inadequately in packing material, I got it out in order to measure it for a wall hanger. Rather than pack it back up, I put it on my bureau so that I would deal with it.
The next day, the kittens got on the bureau and smashed it onto the floor. I watched it happen from a few feet away. Even as I was picking up the shards, wondering whether it would be reparable enough to display, I felt something let go inside my chest. The urge to rush into putting it to rights, a futile undoing of what was done, washed over and through me, and drained away.
When I yield to impulse without discernment, when I get halfway through trying to fix what wasn’t broken yet, I get the very thing I am attempting to avoid.
There is more, though, for I cannot allow succumb to limitations on my growth just because I don’t know how to get there. I mourn the broken platter, but I love it, too, because it happened. I saw that this effort to begin was more than I had made before, but not yet enough.
Every time life expands, the scale of what requires attention grows as well. It’s tempting to stay small so that I can keep everything under an illusion of control.
How do we do this dance? How do we stay in the dynamic balance between attempting that which might yield undesired results, and not getting over-extended?
By recognizing what is impulse, and what is discernment. By creating a framework to say: what is this pull within me? Where does it stem from? Am I being driven by fear (in this small case, that the platter will break), or by inspiration. I may not know if I am capable of the task which I set before me, but if I am drawn to it in the knowledge that the failure would be in not trying, rather than goaded to it out of anxiety, then I need to commit to it, and keep going.
If I do that, and it still ends up smashed on the floor, well, that must be an Upper Limit, and I have an exciting new phase of growth to figure out!
“Am I being driven by fear or by inspiration?”
thank you for this, i do need to keep this question in mind as i continue on my path.
“I may not know if I am capable of the task which I set before me, but if I am drawn to it in the knowledge that the failure would be in not trying, rather than goaded to it out of anxiety, then I need to commit to it, and keep going.” ❣️
"Every time life expands, the scale of what requires attention grows as well. It’s tempting to stay small so that I can keep everything under an illusion of control."
Nice, very true!