I have been haunted by a woman I met in Montpelier,Vermont while visiting family. We met by coincidence. I was looking for a quiet place to write in my journal and she had a table next to mine in a coffee shop @ at Hunger Mountain Food co-op.
We started talking about writing. She said she was working on a job application. I said I coached people move through thresholds in their life: new work, vision of the future, holding space for people to explore. Deep listening.
She said she wanted the new job but felt obligated to keep the safe job she already had since she had a mortgage, and she was the main breadwinner. Her husband got construction jobs once in a while. So it felt risky to look for new work even though her husband and friends were cheering her on to take a risk.
She was training for a marathon in her 40's and had been training for sometime with a woman who was slower than her.
When her training partner asked her to run the whole race with her, she agreed, even though she knew she was faster than her. She didn't say anything to the woman about wanting to run her own race. And she found herself getting angry at her after the race.
There was new distance at work between herself and friends.
As our conversation unfolded within an hour, she looked at me and realized she had been holding herself back from her greatest potential all her life. She used people as proxies for her own decision to not risk and take a chance. And she didn't let anyone know how "helpful" they had been keeping her in place, keeping her house of cards upright.
Her husband's decision to work part time was her reason to stay stuck in a job she didn't like to keep their income secure.
Her running partner's slow pace kept her hemmed in from making a break for it on her own to see what her personal best running could be.
And her friends keeping their distance weighed on her as she felt the loss of her work community.
She looked at me and said "It is all me creating these situations, isn't it?"
I asked her: What would it mean to risk in any of these areas?
Here we are on a planet in the middle of nowhere in the Universe and we act as if we shall live forever. We cut deals with ourselves to go only so far, to play it safe.
And she was working so hard to keep her house of cards propped up, to make herself stay in the "safe" zone with family and friends, even at the cost of living an authentic life.
I've noticed this time and again in life. I want the solid ground, I want things to stay the same. And things fall apart.
Life is on the move. We're only here for a short time between the miracle of birth and death. And it takes years of practice to be able to keep moving while life is on the move, to get used to living in uncertainty.
I felt a lot of compassion for this woman who unfolded in front of me in this conversation.
I asked her what she was going to do now that she saw the possibilities of living differently a home, work and play.
She said she'd think about it. She wasn't sure. She's that close to transformation.
I'm writing this down to see if it resonates with you, too.
Are there places in your life you know you are dialed back, settling for less to keep people you like happy (even if you haven't told them?).
This story is going in a chapter of a story book with poetry woven into it-- a book I'm writing on how we grow and change.
Have you seen people working hard to keep their house of cards in place? I'd love to hear your stories.
Do you think understanding the pattern is prelude to crossing the threshold to transforming your life?
She knew she had to decide. How about you?
What I am noticing is that even with awareness and acceptance, walking through the thresholds, as David Whyte says "the doors that frighten you and invite you" is not a given.
I'm curious about the space between recognition that life has to change and deciding whether or not you are going to transform it.
We live with this tension between being and becoming, and think nothing of it.
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