I am fortunate whenever I am asked to participate on the Living Hope Podcast. I have been a guest a few times. I shamelessly leverage the fact that I have survived pancreatic cancer and I want people to know it is possible. Either through luck, great doctors, good genes or the right bad genes…somehow it could be possible. The ability to trust a process that may or may not save your life, but it will definitely change it, is not easy.
How often do we ignore the mystery or possibilities that come with uncertainty for the safety of the expected? How often do we stick to the familiar places that provide predictability to avoid surprises? How often do we stay clear of an enigma to protect ourselves from our own egos? How often do we leave ourselves behind to appease and protect the comfort of others? Even when it could mean the difference between life and death, the ability to move beyond the familiar can be challenging …but, it is also necessary to grow: to transform to who we could be, to who we should be. There is no shortage of stories and parables of the strain that growth and the inevitable changes that come with it, puts on one’s life. Often the environment or ecosystem around them is slow to change, untrusting of the approach of the one who changes. Regardless, it requires us to be brave, to test the water and move or face the consequences of stagnation.
As a child, while helping my father take care of some repairs around the house, he stressed the importance of ensuring that the unencumbered flow of water, air, and electricity, is paramount to a well functioning home. If water doesn’t flow, it stagnates, causing illness. If air doesn’t flow, the quality of that air becomes harmful and the various deleterious effects of that will permeate our whole experience: breathing, bad odors, respiratory problems, even suffocation. Most importantly, I thought, if electricity doesn’t flow, the true intent of its power its never realized.
Maybe it is time to open our eyes to new opportunity, to the radical and rapid change we witness on a daily basis, to let go of the old ways and allow life and experience to flow like it never has. Maybe it is time to unlock the greatness that may be right before us, yet covered up in the familiar…
“Friendships and relationships suffer the immense numbing through the mechanism of familiarization. We reduce the wildness and mystery of a person and landscape to the external yet familiar image. Yet, the familiar image is merely a facade…familiarity is one of the most subtle and pervasive forms of human alienation” John O’Donahue
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