If we try to avoid a powerful wave looming above us on the beach, it will send us crashing into the sand and surf. But if we face it head on and dive right into it, we discover only water.”
Every once in a while I start re-reading the journals I’ve been keeping for the last twenty years. I read them because, like a compass, they help me figure out where I am. Sometimes I even find something precious in them like the quote above, which came from a book I was reading on October 27, 2002. The book was called Buddhism without Beliefs, A Contemporary Guide to Awakening.
That quote made me stop and think. The day after I copied it into my journal I wrote:
It seems as though I have been living my life controlled by a fear as powerful as a wave looming above me - the fear of being abandoned first by my mother, then by my ex-husband, and even now by the man I love. It feels as though I have spent my entire life living in the shadow of that fear. But now, I am ready to dive into it, hoping that when I do I will find not loneliness, but aloneness, solitude, empty space and room to grow there.
And today, sixteen years later, I find I have only just begun to grow there.
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