Every week I have a plan about what I am going to write about and inevitably every week I change my mind at the last minute. I have no idea what this means, but I listen to my gut and change I do. This week I want to write about work and the work we do to become better people. I am 45 years old and I have been in therapy for half my life. I have spent countless hours and dollars trying to figure out how to be a better person and how to get more out of my life and the lives of those I love. I realize that therapy is not for everyone, but it has been a huge gift to me. And it has been a ton of work as well. I have carried things around with me so much more and longer than I needed to. I assume that when someone drops the ball at my feet that it is my job to pick it up. I am learning that it is not job. And not only is it not my job, but I can also choose to leave it there at my feet, untouched.
For years I have been waiting for the grand finale. I have been waiting to have the 'AHA' moment. And it has never come. I always remember the story about the person who walks down the street and keeps missing the manhole without its cover and she falls in and is stunned. Then as she becomes more self aware, she starts to see the manhole, but she continues to fall in. The goal, of course, is to see the manhole and to walk around it. I feel like I have seen that damn manhole for twenty years and that I fall in it every single time.
And so I have waited for the big answer to come to me and it continued to elude me. The last few years I have switched from individual to group therapy and it has been an amazing journey. I am discovering that I am learning more from other people than I ever could have on my own at the place I find myself in right now. And recently I HAVE had that 'AHA' moment and it is that there is no such thing as an 'AHA' moment. I just finished Cheryl Strayed's book "Tiny Beautiful Things" and she said it better than I ever could.
Real change happens on the level of the gesture. It's one person doing one thing differently than he or she did before. It's the man who opts not to invite his abusive mother to his wedding; the woman who decides to spend her Saturday mornings in a drawing class instead of scrubbing the toilets at home; the writer who won't allow himself to be devoured by his envy; the parent who takes a deep breath instead of throwing a plate...The work is there. It's our task. Doing it will give us strength and clarity. It will bring us closer to who we want to be.
And that is EXACTLY it! It IS about the gesture, about the tiny little things that we alter. It makes me think of the title of the novel I love so much, "The God of Small Things". The key is the miniscule gesture, the small thing, the slight alteration, the tiny adjustment. It is what will change everything. It is what will open up the door to a whole new world.