Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. – Seneca (54 BC-34AD), A Roman rhetorician whose studied great orators such as Cicero.
This weekend I was in attendance at a service for my buddy’s mother who has just passed away. I could not have even imagined a more idyllic setting as we all sat in a classic Cape Cod chapel listening to some final thoughts about Dottie! But the one comment that really made me think was a reference to a new beginning. It was expressed that to fully realize our full potential we have to pass through death. Beyond the obvious connotation, I began to think that the concept holds great truth when it comes to personal change! So many of us are seeking real and meaningful change and are trapped in a painful and sometimes hopeless spot where becoming who we really want to be would require the death of who we currently are…and that’s a tough pill to swallow on many levels!
First of all, it would require that we embrace the humility to admit that we just don’t like who we have become.I’m not talking about some public forum where we stand up and admit in a shameful way how we have gone astray…I think that’s fine when we need emotional support through our trials and tribulations. What I’m really thinking about is that moment when we look in the mirror and experience the true humility to admit that we are off track…not anybody else’s opinion of where we should be headed, rather deep inside where we reconcile the difference between what we know we could be and who we are now! Yet every time we get to that point, we take the easy way out because we associate change with embarrassment and I’m going to make a strong argument that public embarrassment could be the greatest fear of all!
