GETTING STUCK

Perfect darkness. Reinforced steel concrete walls measuring two feet thick. The inside is daunting, never mind the three-and-a-half foot wide steel clad combination door that gives access to the chamber within.

_________________

I had just curled up on my favorite brown speckled cowhide chair when I noticed it. Just a glance and my heart was beating out of my chest. Like those with faces buried in laptops and notebooks, I had come here to ignite my creativity, drenching it in my favorite matcha, enveloped in décor a little more posh than the typical neighborhood cafe.

“Is that a vault?” I asked the young girl at the counter who met my gait as I launched across the room with this out-of-body compelling that drew me to the enormous propped open steel door.

As we stood a safe distance outside of the deep, dark cavern, I shared how my fear of getting stuck keeps me from locking even the most innocuous public restroom door while she mused that this ordinary coffee shop was once the first bank in the area, built in 1887.

Then, something extraordinary happened. She pointed to a jagged hole in the thick concrete and told me that one of the [large] contractors working on the renovation for the coffee shop managed to somehow close the vault with the contents of his whole self tucked inside.

That large man got up that morning and went to work only to spend twelve hours in darkness while his colleagues jack-hammered him out.

It seems there are no ordinary days. We gather ourselves and head out into the world, single-minded in our intent. But the world has other plans. Mostly, we fight and claw our way through all the [seemingly little] landmines that we perceive are in our way. 

SOMETIMES, WE MISS THE VERY THINGS PUT DIRECTLY IN OUR PATH TO CHANGE OUR PERSPECTIVE, OUR MINDS, OUR HEARTS.

Here is the thing that scares me, tucked in a corner, seemingly out of place. And then I notice and everything shifts. I spend my afternoon, or at least a portion of it, evaluating why it is that I am so terribly afraid of getting stuck.

We are all stuck. At least most of us to varying degrees. We define ourselves as someone we used to be [or knew] and we work hard at keeping that version of ourselves in tact. But who is that person, really, and why do we define ourselves within the dark-chamber boundaries of two-foot thick walls?

I AM HERE TO DIG YOU OUT. OR AT LEAST TAKE THE FIRST SWING OF THE SLEDGEHAMMER. FAIR WARNING, YOU HAD BETTER BACK UP. I AM RELENTLESS IN MY PURSUIT OF TRANSFORMATION, EXPERT IN THE ART OF LETTING GO.

In that dark twelve hours I imagine this very large man feeling frightened, even small. But at some point in those 720 minutes he would have had a reckoning with himself—

SOMETIMES WHEN THE WALLS CLOSE IN WE BEGIN TO EXPERIENCE THE EXPANSE.

In the quiet of our self-imposed prisons we begin to desire a way out.
Our real friends will drill until their hands are bloodied.
Those who are more small-minded will sit with us in the corner, in the dark.

IF I HOLD MYSELF WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF “WHAT WAS,” I MAY NEVER GET OUT.

The thing I most fear [cancer] has happened and the irony is, it has set me free—
Free to leave the caricature of the me behind that everybody expects,
Free to resonate rather than impress,
Free to get to know myself rather than other-obsess.

We are so afraid of the quiet, afraid of what our soul may say to or about us.

When we refuse to listen, the vault door shuts, and we become distanced not only from the world, but from the truest parts of the man or woman we were intended to become.

LIFE IS NOT A MASTERY OF ONE THING OR ANOTHER BUT AN EVOLUTION OF OUR HUMANITY, MOSTLY REALIZED THROUGH TINY STEPS THROUGH THE DARKNESS. MOSTLY THROUGH THE HARD CONVERSATIONS WHEN NO ONE ELSE IS AROUND.

Three years of surprises—diagnosis, surgeries the shifting the entire foundation of how I live my life—
If you ask me the one thing that gets me through I would tell you…

NEVER LET THE FINITE BRAIN DEFINE THE INFINITE WISDOM AND MYSTERY OF THE GOD WHO BECAME A MAN, JUST TO UNDERSTAND ME A LITTLE BIT MORE, AND THEN TO INVITE ME TO SAVE MYSELF.

BELIEVE…that there is more, there is hope, there is a way up and out.
I sip my matcha. And I marvel.

NOTES:

I am in the process of writing a book and relaunching my website and my brand. 
I have poured through two decades of notes and projects and grieved over so many things I must now leave behind so that I can make room for what's ahead.

It turns out, our “baggage” is not always something negative but sometimes good things that no longer serve a purpose in our lives. 

I have traveled with some of my most beautiful possessions. Things that weighed me down. Things that made my body ache from the hoisting and dragging about.

There comes a time when even the best of who we were must be left behind—
to make room for the human we are meant to become.

Such a difficult moment, that reckoning with the collision of a past so comfortable and familiar, with a future filled with moments we could never script.

Then comes the hunger for change, for revelation, and everything shifts.
Here is the essential message—be not only willing but eager to be transformed.