Imbolc Valentine Moon
“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” Rumi
This is life’s biggest challenge, paring away the expectations of parents, teachers and friends, paring away the influence of expectations garnered from others who seem successful. Why is this life’s biggest challenge? Because no matter how strong or how sensible expectations of you are, they mean nothing next to the unfolding seed that is your life. Your life.
You are unique, the only constellation of stardust ever created that has your particular biology and your personal history. Even if you shape yourself in dutiful obedience to an outsiders expectations, even if when you do so, you find yourself successful according to some criteria or another, you will have robbed the earth and humankind because you will have hidden the gifts that only you have to offer.
We are so good at hiding our own, powerful self in the cloaks of profession, of achievement, of fame, of obedience, of dogma and ideology that we often hide it from ourselves. Learning who you are and what you are is so easily enmeshed in the web your life weaves; whole schools of philosophy have been devoted to the inscription over the doorway to the Delphic oracle: Know thyself.
Memento Mori mosaic from excavations in the convent of San Gregorio, Via Appia, Rome, Italy. The Greek motto gnōthi sauton (know thyself, nosce te ipsum) combines with the image to convey the famous warning: Respice post te; hominem te esse memento; memento mori. (Look behind; remember that you are mortal; remember death.)
There is no easy formula for taking on this task of paring away, of pruning the branches of your life so that only the strong, self-defining trunk and its branches remain. It requires at least, a ruthless honesty, a modest bravery and unrelenting persistence. The honesty is, I think, self-explanatory. Acting on the learning that honesty brings requires bravery and the action of unfolding your own myth takes a lifetime.
But what a journey.
