It's February...already. I wrote 2 posts on this blog in January, and even let a few friends know about it. That is big stuff. You set a goal Karrie? You acted on it? I do think that most of us limit our greatness potential because of our fears and thinking small. Some of what I've been through the last several years has left me understanding that experiment sometimes done with flies....they are put in a jar for a long time, and then, when the lid is taken off, they just stay in the jar. They have forgotten that they can fly out. They have become conditioned to their immediate space and have embraced it as their whole universe. Or maybe those flies look up and outside of that jar and are scared shitless! "It's too big, too far, too UNKNOWN" I can just hear them saying to their other fly friends. Partially semi-conscious (I have lived in THAT space) and partially scared out of their minds (I have been there too-mostly some part of everyday), those flies just say "I'm cool with this dang jar, how about you guys?"
Recently, as I have envisioned life outside the jar. I have perhaps taken short excursions above that lid. It's scary, yes, to move beyond the safety of the jar. Is this what all that talk of faith was about? Daring to move beyond the jar, to unknown territory, and know somehow that you'll be ok? That something beyond anything you can conceive of is running this show? Not my feebly small mind? I remember walking on the beach one time and seeing the sand right in front of my feet, maybe the face of a passerby if they walked right by me, etc. Then, it's as though I got different lenses and I started to look wider...there were 100's and 1000's of things I didn't see before....it was amazing to me how limited my vision had been. I adopted this mantra that day..."there's more than you can see, there's more than you can see."
Today could be one of those "out of the jar" days for me. I'm still experimenting on how personal to get on this blog thing...but only my loved ones are reading this. So if you haven't checked it out, there are really good things happending at Guilford college these days! I get to go be part of something good today...I see it with my little eyes, but have to believe that there's so much more than I can see. I hope I can be open to air above the lid, new views and vantage points, enough to contribute with a positive pebble thrown.
PROSPECTIVE IMMIGRANTS PLEASE NOTE, by Adrienne Rich
Either you will go through this door or you will not go through.
If you go through there is always the risk of remembering your name.
Things look back at you and you must look back and let them happen.
If you do not go through it is possible to live worthily.
To maintain your attitudes, to hold your position, to die bravely.
But much will blind you, much will evade you, at what cost, who knows?
The door itself makes no promises.
It is only a door.
5 comments:
I had no idea, Karrie, that you are such a great writer. You are able to capture your thoughts and feelings so creatively.
Right now my siblings and I are helping my parents move to an assisted living facility near Hilde. It feels like such a monumental move since they've lived in their current town for over 50 years. We're all scared and looking out of our comfortable jar with trepidation. I'm so fortunate that my family is working together on this. I think that helps one fly again, the love and support of our friends and family.
Kay, I'm thinking about you all, and this is truly monumental. But you all have lived such love and faith as individuals and a family, that I know your risking moves out of that jar will be all good and very rich. Thanks for taking the time to do this. It means a lot.
Thank you, Karrie. This image of a jar of flies so long confined that they don’t know what to do once the lid is left off except stay in the jar- that image is the arrow straight and true to the mark —I am a prisoner of my mind.
“Just give yourself permission and do what it is you want." Well, I take others into account. I want a family shape which we are working to re-define. Meanwhile, I am living in a jar-space: no lid, no glass jar, no nothing and I confine myself to the memory of the shape. Where to go? What to do? Always before in my life/our life as a family there was a sense of plan, of goal, of purpose.
In honesty that too had grown confining and we all knew it. Even so, it sustained me. Now, I’m lost from it. And I’m so damn angry that it is gone! The community I had was based on the presence of my child. Now that he is gone away we none of us know how to continue to be a community. And the community of work I have is too small; I question how fulfilling the work actually is.
I’ve lost the knack of feeling comfortable in my own skin and every day I must be mindful of deliberately choosing the things that put me back into it: writing, movement, connecting with nature, playing the piano. —I’m trying to be patient, I want to find my hope and optimism again, my sense of courage and strength.
Emily Dickenson wrote that hope is that thing with feathers. I take this as a clue: Name it, take it into your heart when what you are looking for is in front of you, it is so fleeting. And know too that this is what it is to be human.
well here's a big mistake- I posted as You, Karrie! Talk about not looking up from the sand! My apologies. Claire
Claire, you are and always have been an articulate and beautiful writer. "A prisoner of mind" really makes sense to me. Isn't that what we all are...you, Claire, have always helped me understand something about moving the prison walls...just a little wider, or shorter to see over.
I know that you are in that process now. Hard work.
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