GAPs
It is up to us to be a prisoner of our past, by remaining in it; or to be a champion of our future by building it. If your life path was to travel from one of these formations to the next one and so on to the end, how would you do it? You could climb down and walk to the next peak and scale up and repeat over and over again. Or, you could become a bridge builder. Neither way is wrong or right. Just different choices.
We could for sake of argument take opposing viewpoints on the better, faster way to walk this path. We could discuss how those that follow us would make better speed with the bridge. Or how scaling up each peak would define us, and make us stronger. But at the end of the day, the analogy is that each of us has our own path of divine destiny to walk.
Rainer Maria Rilke said, “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” I love this. This is the synopsis my most recent experience of the past year. For many years I knew that in my journey in life, I was having one foot on the gas, and one foot on the brake in accomplishing my goals. The pattern began when I was four years old and I walked in on my mom having sex with a man that was not my father.
What I took from this experience is that it wasn’t safe to be seen. So I spent years of my life trying to be invisible, and it worked. Thus one foot on the brake, and one foot on the gas. Every time my foot on the gas caused me to be close to my goals, I slammed on the brakes and hid. I worked on this and in the past few years thought that I was no longer being invisible.
I had widened my circle of comfort and felt that I had my foot off the brakes. Instead of hiding in crowds I am very social. I speak on stages to hundreds without fear. But the chameleon quality of this life pattern came to my attention this past week. I had been trying very hard to get my website completed, and I realized that I was again driving with one foot on the brake. In the past 6 months I have been the hold up.
I am expanding my comfort zone and that invisible foot was being slammed on the brakes. I was being defeated by a “greater” thing. Many teach that we came into this life to have a certain experience.
Mine seems to be dealing with this pattern of foot on the brakes, when I am pushing hard on the gas to accomplish a goal. Now I recognize it has chameleon like qualities. I know that when I feel like I am not progressing towards my goals, I have to go looking for that sneaky lizard. This life pattern is my GAP – Gods Area of Preparation. This is where I learn about new ways that my life pattern has shifted, and I learn new ways to build bridges to close that gap. Can you see GAPs in your life pattern? Do you see where you need to learn to build bridges to close off the gap to get to your destination?
Bridges
“People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges” – Joseph Newton
I thought that this was an interesting quote because when we meet someone we form an opinion based on how they look, what they might have said and done, etc… Then each time we see them again we look for confirmation of our original judgment; because we are subconsciously wanting to be right in that judgment, so we look to find the facts to make us right.
We are busy building a wall between them and ourselves. We are not looking to build a bridge where we are looking to give them the benefit of the doubt and see what wonderful gifts they are bringing to our relationship.
We do this with our team members at work; our relatives, and our close friends. We assign everyone a role, maybe your brother can’t hold down a job; your cousin drinks too much; George at work never completes a project on time. The wall that we build holds them in place so that these judgments become self fulfilling prophecies.
When we are around our cousin, we look for evidence of drinking and because we are holding to this judgment, the cousin buckles under the pressure and drinks too much. We don’t trust George to keep up with team assignments and instead of helping him, seeing what we could do to get the ball rolling, etc…, we are harsh and demanding and so George drags his feet because he doesn’t feel wanted, appreciated etc…, and he in turn makes the project late and we are vindicated that once again we are right.
What if we began looking at every relationship for the good qualities that they have and let me know how much we appreciate the talents that they have? What if we began praising instead of complaining. Asking them to show us how they get something done so perfectly? Building little bridges to them so that we can tear down both sets of walls? Think of the wonderful relationships that would blossom from this space!