my character, marisol's angel, experiences a rather extreme shift of identity in this drama. she has known only her roll as guardian for all of her existence. then suddenly she takes it upon herself to assume a different roll. a warrior. for a cause with a most uncertain outcome. a cause greater than herself. greater even than her love for the one she is in direct care of. this is heartbreaking. but necessary.
in my personal life such a scenario is not unfamiliar. i know about care-taking. i know about seeing to the needs of others before my own self. this is how i was raised. but in recent years i have also learned to depart from certain attachments to loved ones. i have become aware that unless i fight for my truth i am actually doing a disservice to those i love. it has taken much time to convince me this is no selfish endeavor. for the angel it took thousands of years.
realizing that true growth and reconfiguration cannot come about without considerable loss is difficult at best. yet can we not all learn life's most valuable strengths while fending for ourselves? loss of loved ones, teachers, leaders, and so on can leave us bewildered and devastated. severing on some level is often needed in order for us to ask who we honestly are, what we honestly believe. the question may be terrifying. it has been for me. and perhaps still is from time to time. i am, however, continually learning to plunge into the fright of such fluid reality knowing that through it i will grow stronger in myself and thus be of much more significant impact on those around me. then fear is transformed to joy.
no one can give to me the force i have already within myself. even as i can give this to no one. we do have the power to either remind each other of or distract each other from our genuine lives. yet i think that when we begin to learn our own depths, regardless of outward influence, we are becoming our rightful selves.
in my personal life such a scenario is not unfamiliar. i know about care-taking. i know about seeing to the needs of others before my own self. this is how i was raised. but in recent years i have also learned to depart from certain attachments to loved ones. i have become aware that unless i fight for my truth i am actually doing a disservice to those i love. it has taken much time to convince me this is no selfish endeavor. for the angel it took thousands of years.
realizing that true growth and reconfiguration cannot come about without considerable loss is difficult at best. yet can we not all learn life's most valuable strengths while fending for ourselves? loss of loved ones, teachers, leaders, and so on can leave us bewildered and devastated. severing on some level is often needed in order for us to ask who we honestly are, what we honestly believe. the question may be terrifying. it has been for me. and perhaps still is from time to time. i am, however, continually learning to plunge into the fright of such fluid reality knowing that through it i will grow stronger in myself and thus be of much more significant impact on those around me. then fear is transformed to joy.
no one can give to me the force i have already within myself. even as i can give this to no one. we do have the power to either remind each other of or distract each other from our genuine lives. yet i think that when we begin to learn our own depths, regardless of outward influence, we are becoming our rightful selves.
I am reminded of this passage from "Letters to a Young Poet":
It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet CAPABLE of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is - solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent - ?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.