I think that, at some point in our lives, we will be slapped in the face with our limitations and with the reality of who we really are. For many, that means recognizing that we are ordinary, fallible, mortal, perhaps not-so-intelligent or not as gifted as we'd thought. For others, it involves the acceptance of some restricting factors - external factors or physcial ones - which keep us from attaining the full bulk of the promise held out to us by our gifts or intelligence. For some it will mean recognizing that the "American Dream" is going to pass us by and that we cannot work, scheme or luck ourselves into wealth or fame.
We can respond by sinking into a morass of depression; turning tail and running, fueled by denial; or we can welcome the knowledge as a deeper level of self-comprehension and embrace the factor causing us to fail to attain our dreams. We can, instead, work to define new goals or re-directed ones based on the core understanding of the reality of who we are.
But first we should accept and face and integrate the pain of that initial loss and failure. I have real trouble with this...real difficulty in feeling and mourning it and experiencing its pain for the still-birthed, beloved infant that it was. Rather, I intellectualize it and shelter my heart in this manner and I'm so successful at this evasion that even when I welcome it and seek it in my desire to move on, unfettered by past failure, I cannot get in touch with the pain of this loss at all....Even though I know full well that it lurks, like some secreted ghost from my past. I think that I explain my denial as a kindness to myself, but in truth it is not. It would be kindness, rather, to welcome the failure and to accept it without self recrimination; without calling myself names; without feeling that the failure to achieve my dreams, means that I am a failure. This is the process I am attempting to undertake so that I can move on from this stuck place, with newer, perhaps more appropriate goals.
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