Time can be the great thinner of things.
Especially when it comes to our cherished habits and beliefs. Because the older we get, and the smaller our ego and pride get, the more we engage our capacity to outgrow what’s no longer working for us.
And this process doesn’t have to be painstaking. It’s certainly a grieving process, as any change is. But the thinning is less about renouncing and quitting and more about surrendering and shedding.
It’s this organic, elegant, natural process. Over time, these things we used to hold so dear, these pegs we hung our identity hats on, they’re simply left behind.
And the best part is, there’s no need for hard feelings towards any particular habit or belief. We accept they’ve become less interesting to us, and get on with our lives.
Thinking back to my own beliefs, my own coveted opinions about myself and this world, it’s borderline embarrassing about what used to pass for important to me. Makes me want find anyone who knew me prior to age thirty and send them an apology fruit basket.
Still, there’s no use beating myself up. Because such is the nature of time. It slowly wrings the wrongness out of us, opening our hearts to absorb new streams of living water, quenching our newly evolved thirst.
These forces of nature compel us loosen our hold on that which is unhealthy and set the stage for real change.
It’s really quite beautiful. We discover that evolving isn’t about being some perfectly consistent living realization of our values and beliefs every goddamn minute of the day, it’s about our ability to shed our old beliefs and accept new paradigms and surrender to who we are becoming.
As the mystics say, we must die to our old ways, we must come to the end of self before we begin to live.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Do you know when your reality is outgrowing your current strategy for navigating it?