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On Becoming

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© Stephanie Bennett Vogt

“You can’t force a rosebud to blossom by beating it with a hammer.” –Rachel Naomi Remen, MD

In our home in Mexico we had a bougainvillea varietal that had no blooms. No matter what I did (new pot, more sun, gentle whispering) it just wouldn’t budge.

Until this year, when we returned in the winter to see a joyful exuberance of color.

Some things just can’t be rushed.

There is a saying that pertains to the planting cycle of a new garden: The first year the plants “sleep,” the second year they “creep,” the third year they “leap.”

I like to think that cycles like these (in varying degrees of time) pertain to us humans too as they relate to waking up to, and becoming, more of ourselves – more of who we were always meant to be.

When I quit a twenty-year career as a high school Spanish teacher back in 1996, for example, I had no idea that the next big chapter in my professional life would take another twenty years. There was nothing cluing me in that I would go on a deep dive into a whole new field study, personal clearing, teaching, and writing to fully live and embody the work I came here to do.

Teaching I could understand. But writing? Publishing multiple books? Seriously? I was a slow reader in grammar school; spent my summers in high school getting tutored in writing. There was nothing on my radar that said Author.

Yes, you could say that most of my professional life has been one of “sleeping” and “creeping” before I could finally begin leaping. The running joke in my household is that it’s taken me forty years to become an overnight success.

And yet, knowing all that – knowing how long it would take to uncover my purpose – I’m grateful for all of it. Even when it didn’t look like much on paper, took decades to connect the dots, and often made no practical sense from a financial standpoint, all of it mattered. Every slow, obscure, messy, exasperating step I took informed my journey. And thankfully, despite the many bumps, the twists and turns, the delays and disappointments, I stayed with it.

And… while the plant cycle appears to stop at “leap,” we all know it doesn’t end there. There is no end point to “becoming.”

We do not need to “bloom” in order to blossom.

Just like a plant, there are periods of expansion and periods of contraction for us humans too. There are growing periods and rest periods, shedding periods and bloom periods. As long as the roots are there, being nourished and fed, there is no end to the growth cycle.

My “true purpose” will no doubt continue to morph and expand and illuminate. Who knows where my journey will take me next and what it will uncover. As former First Lady (and now bestselling author of the fabulous book Becoming), Michelle Obama, so aptly points out in a conversation with Oprah Winfrey [see below], “becoming” is a continually evolving, fluid, uncovering process.

What is becoming in your life?  What does blossoming look like? Would you be willing to wait – days, months, years, if necessary – if you knew that’s how long it would take for a higher dream to blossom in your life? What is wanting to reveal itself to you now?

These are what I call “wonder questions” – questions that are not meant to be answered in the traditional, linear way. They invite you, instead, to contemplate them, savor them, live them.

Like I say, some things just can’t be rushed.

 

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