When this one thing finishes … then everything else can begin.
Over the decades, I have had the humbling privilege of walking alongside folk as they have transitioned from one ‘place’ to another, and perhaps this is a daily process.
Some are subtle, like grey hair, a wrinkle and a common cold. Others are monstrous and uninvited. Sometimes the development is welcome, like the transit from heavily uncomfortable and pregnant to the birth of a child.
Sometimes it is a traumatic upheaval from life to death. I have not sought these companionable opportunities and the most fruitful occasions are when they have found me.
On these fraught occasions I come back to the line
“When this one thing finishes,… then everything else can begin.” This sounds easy, exciting and something to look forward to; but it isn’t always. The ‘everything else’ isn’t always clear, is often painful, and frequently is not looked for or looked forward to.
It takes months, sometimes years, to know what the strange bumpy terrain feels like. I suspect the trick is to be exceptionally gentle with yourself. To be patient and to listen to others who have traversed this country before you. Where are the boulders and the pitfalls?
Now I find myself looking to my own transition. Sometimes straining ahead, eager and enchanted. Sometimes poignantly not really ready to relinquish the treasures I know I must surrender. If it were anyone else, I would know exactly what to say and how to listen, but when you're in the centre of the maelstrom yourself, it’s almost impossible to be objective. The eye of the cyclone is supposed to be still and calm, but when everything else is swirling frenetically around you… So I cling to my mantra “When this one thing finishes,… then everything else can begin.”