It takes intentionality. Forethought. Effort. Dedication. Discipline. It’s sometimes painful. The benefits are often far in the future. Do I believe it’s worth it? 1000%. Does pretending it’s easy help? No.
Remembering WHY you’re pursuing personal growth can provide the motivation you need to keep going. Your WHY can be a lot of things—more physical energy, greater peace, better relationships, a deeper sense of purpose, connecting with your Higher Power, healing a wound from your past, and the list goes on.
I recently had a flash of personal WHY clarity when I read the following quote:
The only person who can answer the questions posed by the often painful challenges of aging is the person we will be in the moment we confront those circumstances. The shaping of that person into someone with greater wisdom and equanimity can begin in this moment.
Kathleen Dowling Singh in The Grace in Aging: Awaken as You Grown Older
I’m fifty-three. Not terribly old, but certainly not young. I’m closer to the end of my life than the beginning. As I look ahead to the questions aging brings, I’m reminded that the best thing I can bring to an unknown future is a mature version of myself. Improving my emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical health now not only benefits me in the short term, but will also make the inevitable struggles of aging easier. That knowledge gives me serious motivation to do the work.
What are your WHYs for personal development? Remind yourself of them often. Write them on sticky notes on your mirror. Add them to your calendar the first of each month. Discuss them with trusted companions. Read, watch, and listen to others following a similar path. If you do, your future self will thank you, and you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.
Kathleen Dowling Singh, The Grace in Aging: Awaken as You Grow Older (Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2014), 12, 16–17, 17–18, 21, 24.
When someone who knows suffering speaks about forgiveness, it’s wise to listen.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1931-2021) spent decades fighting against the abject racism of the white ruling class in South Africa’s apartheid system. Working closely with Nelson Mandela, he won the Nobel Peace prize for his efforts. He and his daughter Mpho Tutu van Furth wrote powerfully on how recognizing the good and bad in everyone, including ourselves, can help us find our way to forgiveness:
We are able to forgive because we are able to recognize our shared humanity. We are able to recognize that we are all fragile, vulnerable, flawed human beings capable of thoughtlessness and cruelty. We also recognize that no one is born evil and that we are all more than the worst thing we have done in our lives. A human life is a great mixture of goodness, beauty, cruelty, heartbreak, indifference, love, and so much more. We want to divide the good from the bad, the saints from the sinners, but we cannot. All of us share the core qualities of our human nature, and so sometimes we are generous and sometimes selfish. Sometimes we are thoughtful and other times thoughtless, sometimes we are kind and sometimes cruel. This is not a belief. This is a fact.
If we look at any hurt, we can see a larger context in which the hurt happened. If we look at any perpetrator, we can discover a story that tells us something about what led up to that person causing harm. It doesn’t justify the person’s actions; it does provide some context. . . .
No one is born a liar or a rapist or a terrorist. No one is born full of hatred. No one is born full of violence. No one is born in any less glory or goodness than you or I. But on any given day, in any given situation, in any painful life experience, this glory and goodness can be forgotten, obscured, or lost. We can easily be hurt and broken, and it is good to remember that we can just as easily be the ones who have done the hurting and the breaking.
We are all members of the same human family. . . .
In seeing the many ways we are similar and how our lives are inextricably linked, we can find empathy and compassion. In finding empathy and compassion, we are able to move in the direction of forgiving….
We are, every one of us, so very flawed and so very fragile. I know that, were I born a member of the white ruling class at that time in South Africa’s past, I might easily have treated someone with the same dismissive disdain with which I was treated. I know, given the same pressures and circumstances, I am capable of the same monstrous acts as any other human on this achingly beautiful planet. It is this knowledge of my own frailty that helps me find my compassion, my empathy, my similarity, and my forgiveness for the frailty and cruelty of others.
Desmond Tutu and Mpho A. Tutu, The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World, ed. Douglas C. Abrams (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2014), 125, 126, 127. As shared in the September 12, 2022 Daily Meditation from The Center for Action and Contemplation (cac.org).
Sometimes a piece of art just hits me. While looking for pictures to decorate our apartment, I came across one that made me smile. It was whimsical and playful, yet also thought provoking. Here it is:
Elephant and Dog Meditate at Summer Night by Mike Kiev (purchase here)
There’s just something about this painting of a dog and an elephant sitting together, gazing over moonlit waters on a summer night, that I absolutely love. I’m a fan of quirky things, nature, and the color blue, so on those levels, this art piece has a lot of appeal to me.
But I also love contemplation. Just sitting and thinking. I have an evening ritual where I sit on our balcony, look at the night sky above a nearby park, and reflect. I meditate on simple things, like what I did that day, and bigger things, like who I am, why I’m here, and what life is all about.
One of the reasons those times are meaningful is that I feel like the dog in the painting. That I’m not alone in my nighttime routine. I sense an invisible Elephant sitting beside me, staring out into the starlit sky. I feel it’s presence surrounding me, comforting me, whispering to me, guiding me. Something bigger, stronger, and wiser, keeping me company and joining me in quiet reflection.
I call my elephant God. You may call it Mother Nature, a cosmic force, or your higher power. You may call it nothing at all and believe that the universe is a purely physical, naturalistic system. My goal is not to argue in favor of a specific definition of a spiritual component to the universe, but I would like to propose this:
HAVING AN ELEPHANT MAKES LIFE BETTER
Why do I say that? Because I’ve discovered over the course of my life that having Someone bigger, higher, stronger, and wiser than me helps. A lot. It gives me peace. Security. Comfort. Guidance. Companionship. Belonging. Meaning. Love. Joy. Of course, an Elephant is not the only place to find these things, but it is the deepest, truest, and most lasting source of them that I’ve ever found.
I’ve learned that when life is all up to me, I’m not enough. Not to become who I want to be anyway. I need help for that. I’m in no way saying that I think I’m bad or unworthy. Far from it. I believe in and love myself deeply. I have huge respect for the power of the human spirit and what I can accomplish when I set my will to it.
That said, I find the thought that I’m my own highest power is more than a little depressing. I know me. If I’m IT, then I’m in trouble. As wonderful as I am, I know I have weaknesses, flaws, and limitations that will prevent me from being the person I really want to be. From living the life I truly want to live. I need help.
That’s where my Elephant comes in. A Helper. A Guide. A Friend. A Comforter. A Provider. A Protector. A whisper in my spirit that assures me I’m not alone, and that in all the craziness of life, someone much bigger than me has their hands on the wheel. That gives me a lot of comfort and hope.
You may feel that makes me weak. That I’m unwilling to face the cold, cruel reality that we are nothing but a cosmic accident, alone in a mindless, uncaring universe. Perhaps you’re right. Maybe there is nothing more. No-one, certainly not me, can prove the existence of God, a higher power, or whatever a person may call their Elephant. But no-one can disprove the Elephant either. I believe in God because of deeply personal experiences I’ve had and rational arguments I find compelling. Enumerating those is beyond the scope of this post, but if I’m using my belief in an Elephant to achieve a more meaningful, joyful life, then I’m in good company with people a lot smarter than I am. That’s a choice I’m happy to make.
So what about you? Do you have an Elephant? Someone or Something bigger than yourself that you believe in? A higher power that allows you to face life with a hope, peace, and security that can prove elusive when you choose to go it alone?
If you’re intrigued, gaze up at the night sky. Open your mind and heart to God, the Cosmos, Mother Nature, whatever you want to call it. Breathe a prayer. A request for awareness. For ears to hear, eyes to see, a heart to feel. Taste and see. You just may sense an Elephant at your side. If you do, you’ll take a giant leap toward Becoming Yourself.
This post was originally published March 16, 2019.
