Our metamorphosis hurts, because it has to

I stopped what I understood to be a foolish concept of making resolutions at the start of a New Year a long time ago.

I exchanged this for a commitment to resolve to build upon what I learned during the confines of each day and carry that into the next.

Growth and maturity walks in concert with a metamorphosis of sorts, often the metamorphosis extracts some type of pain from us hence the tendency for many people to run from it, rather than embracing it.

We are a product, a creation of our experiences if you will, often we shut ourselves off from what could be truly empowering simply because we lack the fortitude to speak truth to… Ourselves.

Recently, I uncovered a pile of journals going back 20 some odd years, touching on this in a previous blog, it was not unlike discovering a long lost relic. I stared at them, stacked them up and then spread them out on the floor and I sat in a chair with my arms folded.

Admittedly, there was a lot of apprehension on my part as I likened the feeling to exhuming a corpse in a cemetery and now I was taking the morbid next step of unlatching the coffin to take a gander at what was inside.

Finally, I mustered up the gumption to open one of the notebooks and I began to read, slowly taking a long trek back through the years.

I was surprised at much of what was contained inside, but I was comforted by the concept of metamorphosis that I alluded to earlier. Me and this young man couldn’t be more different from one another, his priorities were misplaced; he was narcissistic; narrow minded; selfish and ungrateful. To quote my Big Momma “he was so smart that he was stupid”.

Perhaps it was pure happenstance, but I am inclined to chalk up my progression to divine intervention.

In reading my missives from the past, I truly began to recognize and respect the power that those events had on changing the course of who I was as a person. Seeing the different incarnations that I went through in my late teens, my 20’s and my 30’s was very revealing and sobering as I recalled the pain that was incurred each time I passed from one stage to the next.

This gave me some needed perspective in my encounters with people who have opted time and again not to take on the pain that a metamorphosis undoubtedly brings, choosing to stay in a prison of their own making because of the illusion of comfort that familiarity provides.

That being said is it no wonder that many relationships disapate when we reach a point of clarity that we have or are growing apart?

Is it that the image of them that serves as a reflection of who we were? Is this image repulsive, pugnacious, atrocious and otherwise something that we can’t bring ourselves to gaze upon?

What are we really afraid of?