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I had an accident yesterday that caused a stubborn old paradigm to snap inside me. I accidentally sat down on Jon Snow’s collar, and it broke into little pieces. Immediately I berated myself and fell into fear that I’m going to lose him now because he has no collar and he’s running around the park.
Here’s the thing: the collar is designed like this, for individual pieces to snap off so you can adjust its size as the dog grows. It snaps right back together. I hadn’t realized it until I sat on it and it broke. But it didn’t really “break”. The mishap actually helped me to FIX it, because it wasn’t fitting him.
This is the collar that wasn’t fitting ME: For the past couple of years I’ve been coming to terms with so many regrets, mistakes I’ve made. Mistakes born out of my character that is quite a distance off from my ideal. I’ve read a lot about “Impostor Syndrome”, but what about “Awakening Syndrome” where you realize: I’m not actually who I was trying/pretending to be for all those years.
So the past year or so has been about coming clean about who I really am, and its not the lofty, “spiritual” persona I spent so many years cultivating. I’m really just a broken box of crayons. Still useful, pretty colors and all, but you know, pretty messy.
So when I sat on the collar and realized, its not really “broken”, but a temporary break is necessary to adjust things, I got to see myself in a new light. Because that old collar was too tight, strangling the life out of me. You have to move through the fear, that the broken collar means destruction.
You might feel a bit “lost” for a minute, as I have in the past couple of years. But its just a realignment with who you REALLY are. Thank god for accidents :-).
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