forever –
as time blooms anew
we unfold
finding our places
with best intention
Have you ever considered the roles that you’ve left in your wake on the journey to where you find yourself now?
It’s amazing, the wealth of identities littered on the path behind me, the personal breadcrumbs of a unique course — at work I’ve been a machinist, a shipper, a janitor, a clerk, and a sandwich artist.
That’s right.
I was that guy who delivered your pizza wearing a black leather jacket with spikes on the shoulders. I repaired and polished your shoes. I moved your package from a conveyor belt to a truck, and if I broke whatever was inside I must apologize; the boss told me I wasn’t going fast enough. I was even a grave digger for a day.
So we’re tied, you and I, by a web of connections. I machined the cylinder block of the GE engine on the Boeing 747 that carried you across the ocean. I cut the flat parts for the bucket attached to the Bobcat used to dig out our in-ground swimming pool. I brewed your coffee, delivered your paper, shoveled your snow and mowed your lawn.
On our way to finding a slot in ordinary, humdrum manufactured reality, we also leave some dreams behind. I was going to be a doctor, a writer, an artist, or a musician. When I went to college I was going to be a businessman, then a computer technician, a Russian-speaking ESL teacher, and then a high school English teacher.
Then I realized It had been a mistake to attend college for almost ten years off and on without an appropriate plan.
Still, with all that time and experience of questionable utility behind me, I find myself sporting an overstuffed quiver of roles — fabricator, father, husband, brother, son, craftsman, poet, writer, singer, friend . . . and too many more to list, I’m sure. Ironically, the changing tendency of time induces in me the permanent role of seeker: always looking to find and define, and thus refine and recreate, who I am.
Can you see me as I was? Or am I only who I am, with tales to tell of someone who is not me?
I am very fortunate that today, I find myself just where I need to be. While yesterday is gone forever, the existence of tomorrow always remains to be seen, and so its existence is debatable as well. I am forever blooming in a beautiful world. It doesn’t matter if one thing fails, or another, because there is always a new adventure awaiting me; thus liberated, I hurl myself headlong through space and time.
Look at that! It’s your next adventure.
😉
Rob's Surf Report 
Life is an adventure. Your various identities are pit stops.
Pit stops . . . with culture.
very thought provoking… =)
I too, have identities fallen behind me like so many snake skins, husks in the blistering heat of my desire to move forward.
You are still all that, but are mostly new, as well I think we evolve constantly, and carry shadows of who we once were, catching glimpses of them when we turn a corner quickly and do not expect it. =)
Have a beautiful day… here’s to shifting, blooming, bursting out !
Same to you, Tish — go be your bloomin’, awesome self!
Reblogged this on the tao of jaklumen and commented:
and then, Rob reflects on his journey… and realizes his own Call to Adventure.