April 2011 Newsletter
Online Issue # 27
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The Front Page
The Season for Becoming
“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”
—Anna Quindlen
I found the title for this essay on a piece of paper, clipped to an old body + soul magazine I unearthed during a recent de-cluttering project. Written in my own handwriting, the words—The Season for Becoming—still resonate with me, even though I can't pinpoint what originally prompted me to write them or when.
It might have been an idea for a workshop, a seasonal writing workshop, that would offer an opportunity to gather a small group to explore becoming, in each season and throughout a year. Or it might have been an idea for an occasional column I would write about becoming who we are. Those are my two best guesses. But now a third, new idea occurs to me: I could write to explore how the season for becoming relates to this issue of the newsletter, making it a listening-writing demonstration.
As I entertain this new idea, I listen for questions that might get me started. Isn't it always the season for becoming? What difference does a season make to the process of our becoming? What part (or parts) of the process of becoming is unaffected by the particulars of a season? Is it possible to take a break from becoming, like a person might take a spring-break vacation? Or does the process move along, with or without our awareness, a silent backdrop to every breath and heartbeat?
There are more questions. Do we even realize who and what and how we are becoming? Or is that something more evident to the world around us than it is to us? What role does personal choice or intention play in the process? What are our responsibilities? Who and what are our inspirations?
I sense my focus shifting toward my ongoing attraction to quotations. This has me mentally sifting through fragments I sort of remember, searching for words that might inspire or illuminate something. This is what I dredge up: It takes courage to grow up and become who you already are. There is no name attached to the memory I've hooked. Was it Einstein? I get online and discover it was the poet e.e. cummings, and I was pretty close on the way I remembered the words.
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” —e.e. cummings
I agree with cummings: it does take courage to grow up, and it takes courage to be who you really are. Or as I remembered it, who you already are. Is who you already are different from who you really are? And what does this have to do with the season for becoming?
My listening-writing has taken me on a ramble and, in this moment, I want to write my way home. I want to discover something that connects one thing to another. The words—“in this moment”—leap forward to become my clue: this moment is the time and place for becoming, the only opportunity for becoming.
Unlike a season with its sweeping vistas, cherished traditions, and visible transformation, for many of us one moment is impossible to grasp; it's invisible, it's here and gone, and it can't be contained. Plus, even when we notice moments, there are so many of them in which not much seems to happen. It makes it easy to ignore what we do with them, or fail to do with them.
Yet, each moment is a tiny building block for an hour, a season, and a life. It is the space in which we become—however, whoever, and whatever we become. What we do again and again, makes us who we really are. In the accumulation of our thoughts, choices, and actions, we create and recreate ourselves. We don't do it tomorrow, or next month, or two years from now. We did it yesterday, and this morning, and five minutes ago.
Spring arrives offering another season for becoming who you really are. It brings moments of sweet birdsong, greening landscapes, warm sunshine, puddles, sidewalk cafes, outdoor markets....
Will you inhabit the moment? Will you be who you really are, who you already are? Will you dare to be perfectly yourself—in the only season for becoming—in this moment?
With gratitude,
Laurie Mattila
Stopping to Listen
In case you missed it in December, I announced an audio project that is now available on my website for your listening. Ron Duffy, of Inner Journeys Radio, worked with me to record this conversation in my office in St. Paul where we talked about my work. The five tracks include:
Track 1 Introduction (2:04)
Track 2 Trusting the Process: Becoming Who We Are (24:12)
Track 3 Discovery Writing (33:11)
Track 4 Clarifying Conversations (18:14)
Track 5 Closing Comments (2:02)
I hope you enjoy them all.
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