The blackberries that ripened in the summer sun meet their end in a pot stirred by a grinning skull. They will lose their individuality, be crushed to something unrecognizable—and be preserved to be re-born in deeper sweetness some winter day. If they had stayed on the vine they would have simply withered away. Sometimes the radical change we fear opens us to undreamed possibilities.
Where do you see radical change in your life or the world around you?
In the aging process of my own life. My child is completing her education and beginning her own life as an adult while I am approaching retirement age, just a few short years from now. This will be the most radical change in my life since my 21st birthday. I will gradually become more childlike as I age and my daughter will take over the daily responsibilities of adulthood.
I also see it in the globalization of the economy. My daughter won’t have the same economic opportunities that I took for granted as a young man. Having a good job with benefits that are guaranteed for life is almost unheard of now. Her path in life will be different than mine was. In some ways it will be better and in other ways not so much. I have made it my primary goal in life to prepare her for this journey.
One thing is certain for me now. I can’t live in the past even if I wanted to. I can’t go back to the home I once knew. It isn’t there anymore. The only real choice I have now is to find peace and harmony in this new place and hopefully leave the world in a little better shape than what I found it in.
I went from being a high achieving college student to doing practically nothing to going twice a week to a special place/job for people who cannot work a normal job due to psychiatric disabilities. The illnesses have stayed the same through this whole ordeal; it wasn’t that becoming ill stopped me from doing things. Rather, I’m learning to accept the limitations that have always been there and am prioritizing my health/life over achievements. The change in lifestyle is extreme and the change in attitude isn’t complete. Today I’m really angry that I can’t do the things that other people take for granted. Still, the radical change in lifestyle has “open[ed me] to undreamed possibilities” in that I’ve finally getting spells of drastically reduced symptoms whereas I was almost always in crisis for over a decade.
Where do you see radical change in your life or the world around you?…
Love, acceptance – self and others. A feeling of being better-centered.
Namaste!
Dwayne
Al, I hope you realize that women forever never had the opportunities you took for granted. A rare few were able to establish successful careers. So your daughter’s generation is not unique.