The Many Iterations of You.
My wife has been married to many different men. When she was 30, she was married to this young guy from another country who was kind of an idiot, and really kind of arrogant.
He thought he knew how the world worked, and had all these ideas about how life should be. Turns out, he was kind of wrong, about a lot of things. He had a lot of learning to do.
And the lessons came fast.
Just a few years later, she was married to a man who was kind of broken. He was struggling to work through his own trauma, both of recent and distant origin, and was discovering that he needed a lot of help, although he wasn’t willing to ask for it. She patiently waited for him to work through his issues, and tried to help where he would allow her.
Eventually he asked for help, and began to change.
Several years later she was married to a man who was stuck. This man had exchanged freedom and sanity for an imagined security, and had found that he could not escape the demons of his past as easily as he thought he could.
Unable to move forward because of the beliefs that held him in his own private purgatory, she waited patiently, again helping where she could.
Until the moment was right, and she helped him fly.
Now she’s married to a man who is trying. He’s come a long way from where he was when she first married him 23 years ago, yet he still brings with him challenges and frustrations. But hopefully he’s also learned a few things along the rough and broken journey, and he’s trying to use those to help her and their family, as well as those he has met along the way.
She’s been more patient that he has deserved, but that’s kind of her way.
The reflection here today is that we all change as we travel through our own highway of days. Sometimes that change is the result of persistent personal growth and improvement, and other times it’s a response to the many lessons delivered unto us by life.
For some, change occurs quickly, and for others, the change takes a life time.
But the process of change is so very important.
My goal is to constantly change until I find a version of me that I can live with, and who is at peace with himself. That definition of peace is always changing, but it also gives me the freedom to change into the person who I feel I should be, not just the person who I currently am. We each define ourselves as much by our intentions as we do by our inadequacies.
The process is just as important as the progress.
So if you struggle with who you are today, or feel like you need to make a few changes here and there, please know that life gives you the freedom to choose the next iteration of you, even if it’s only in how you react to all that you find in the world. The greatest changes you make will always be the ones deep inside your heart and your mind.
Just decide who you will be, and work on becoming you all over again.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings