“Here’s How It Happens” (Day #91)
Ah-ha moments are great. But they are also deceiving. Ah-ha moments trick us into thinking we’ve uncovered some immutable truth about ourselves or our relationships or our lives, which we then internalize as The Way Things Are. I am a person who _______. Done. End of story.
But the story doesn’t actually end there because people and relationships and lives aren’t immutable things. The truths we brush up against in these revelatory moments are temporal truths. Not the Way Things Are. Just the Way Things Are Right Now.
After my post on Thursday (the product of an ah-ha moment), I received this comment from Kate @ Savour Fare:
Here’s how it happens. You get pregnant, and you are happy, but if you are normal, you are also scared out of your mind. Then you have the baby and you are exhausted. Then you find your groove, and you are happy, but you are consumed — you become the all-encompassing mommy. You occasionally go out without your baby, but you find yourself talking about her and thinking about her incessantly. And then you go back to work and you cry because you miss her, because she IS your world.
And time passes, and one day you wake up and you are YOU again. Not mommy-you, but the old you, the one you recognize. Except now you have this extra little PERSON in your life, who adds a whole extra dimension of richness and emotion and delight and frustration. And sometimes even reminds you of yourself. And you have your world, and your identity, but it’s suddenly in hi-definition.
These wise words, they instantly struck a chord. “She’s nailed it,” I thought to myself. “She’s exactly right.”
But then, I realized: I can’t say for sure if she’s right, because I’m still here, and she – Kate – is already there. Down the road. Ahead of me on this mommy path. And in that moment, I saw a glimpse of where I am headed. Of who I will be when I get there.
And it was then that I had an even bigger ah-ha moment.
Lil Mil is changing before my eyes. Growing. Becoming. Every day. And so am I.
My identity isn’t a before and after picture. I wasn’t That Person then only to become This Person now. I didn’t leave the “old me” behind to become the “new me.” I am at once both old and new. My identity isn’t changing so much as expanding, making room for all the intricacies and complexities and contradictions of a life-in-process.
I am growing. Becoming. Every day.
Eva @ Eva Evolving
Monday, 3 May, 2010 at 13:34Yes, I love how you describe this: there is no “old me” and “new me.” It’s tricky to reconcile this, to accept that both are me. But we are all evolving, aren’t we? It’s a continuous process, growing and changing just one day at a time.
JB
Monday, 3 May, 2010 at 11:23The last couple of years for me have been a lot about becoming. Making decisions (some huge, some not-so-big) that will shape me more fully into the person that I am. One of the big decisions for me was about staying in a particular city in a particular career or not. As I was in the midst of that identity struggle, a dear friend sent me this quote, which I have referred back to several times during the last two years:
Once or twice in a lifetime,
a man or a woman may choose
a radical leaving, having heard
Lech L’cha – Go forth.
God disturbs us toward our destiny
by hard events and by freedom’s now urgent voice
which explode and confirm who we are.
We don’t like leaving,
but God loves becoming.
-Mishkan Tefilah
I love this because it seems to capture both the exhilarating and excruciating nature of becoming.
For what it’s worth, I took the plunge and left the comfortable city and career to follow my uncertain dreams. Now I’m in grad school and happier than I have ever been. I’m still in the midst of becoming, of course. But the daily angst has lifted and I am trying to…well whadaya know…EMBRACE THE DETOUR!! :o)
Nicole Larsen
Monday, 3 May, 2010 at 10:12I SO needed that reminder. All too often, I find myself “mourning” the loss of the Old Me, and yet I can have both Old and New Me, or some relatively-functional combination. 🙂
THANK YOU
Rachel @ MWF Seeking BFF
Monday, 3 May, 2010 at 9:28Love this. It is really wise. I think the most fascinating thing about blogging is that we usually do it when we anticipate change coming. When we think there is something on the horizon worth documenting. And it’s really brave, because change is uncomfortable and awkward (um, remember puberty? I’d rather not) and we go ahead and live it and write it for all the world to see. So it’s ok if you haven’t figured it all out yet. If you use this blog as the means of doing so. By witnessing your learning process, I’m learning myself. I can only hope my own blog does the same–perhaps on a less grand scale (I have no new mini-me in my life)–but I think that’s why we get into it. We know we’re about to do something Big and we’re going to Learn and we want to be able to say: here’s what I did, here’s what I learned, and then unlearned, and then learned again.