This is your place in the labyrinth.
I ran across this article by Martha Beck today and thought it was just was so perfect, such a great reminder for all of us. Â I hope it blesses you today. Â Remember, we're in this together.Â
From Martha Beck's "The Labyrinth of Life"...
"As every life coach knows, the way we do anything is the way we do everything. The same thoughts that make me squirm in the labyrinth torture me when Iâm writing, emailing, even sleeping. I should be going faster, getting somewhere. I should have more to show for this. I shouldnât have to double back, to revisit old emotional issues, to wipe the same damn kitchen counter every day. These thoughts burble along just under the surface of my consciousness every day. They make me slightly anxiousâokay, some days irrationally terrifiedâand lend a driven quality to moments when I could be relaxed and present.
Iâve heard the same comments from countless people, all schooled to the same obsession with forward progress. We set goals, draw flowcharts, march forward, criticize ourselves if we have to go back, if the same old stuff comes back to haunt us. We want to be DONE with things: the chronic pain, the haunting doubt, the bad relationship patterns, the grief of loss. We want to solve the maze and get out, to the place where we imagine there will be no problems to solve.
The labyrinth is teaching me to question the bits of driven, linear, achievement-based dysfunction that can make me miserable in a life of incredible blessings and good fortune. We didnât enter life to get it done. There is no place not worth revisiting. We double back to find the pieces of ourselves that still clutch the same issues like a baby clutching its pacifier. Compassion invited us to this unbearably repetitive, slow, complex path of self-discovery, to show us that only when we surrender our idea of how things should be going do we notice that the entire thing is breathtakingly beautiful...
Today, if youâre confronting an issue for the ten thousandth time, or feeling that your life is going nowhere, or panicking over how little youâve achieved, stop and breathe. Youâre not falling behind on some linear race through time. Youâre walking the labyrinth of life. Yes, youâre meant to move forward, but almost never in a straight line. Yes, thereâs an element of achievement, of beginning and ending, but those are minor compared to the element of being here now. In the moments you stop trying to conquer the labyrinth of life and simply inhabit it, youâll realize it was designed to hold you safe as you explore what feels dangerous. Youâll see that youâre exactly where youâre meant to be, meandering along a crooked path that is meant to lead you not onward, but inward.
As Proust wrote, 'The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.' Stop now, right now, and look around you. This is your place in the labyrinth. There is no place else you need to be. See with eyes that arenât fixed on goals, or focused on flaws. You are part of the endless, winding beauty. And as you learn to see the dappled loveliness of your life, as your new eyes help you begin loving the labyrinth, youâll slowly come to realize that the labyrinth was made solely for the purpose of loving you."
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