The Decisive Element (and Farewell)

People say that time is the great healer.  In my limited experience, I've found that to be true.  With time, broken hearts are mended, ruptured bonds replaced, and our many selves accepted.  But, the healing (and the growing and learning) processes are not achieved through the passage of time alone.  The true healers are ourselves.  Whether we discover the strength within ourselves, the value of friends and family, the power of love, or the joy of the unknown, we do so only by our own effort, our own decision to explore, to change, to bloom.  As Goethe put it (in the full quotation included below), we are the decisive element.  Each one of us moves forward, onward, and upward only by our own resolve to do so. 

The perfect lotus flower floating on top of the pond exists as it is only because it first rooted itself in the muck beneath.  Life, at times, seems muddy and rotten, the lowest of the low.  But it is these times that present us with the opportunity to anchor ourselves in the nutrient-rich mire of life, and with time, to blossom.  So, time is certainly also an element of change, because the passage of time marks the patience that is required, of ourselves and of others, for the process of growth.  We are the decisive element, and our decision is the seed.  But, making that decision, living it over and over again through weeks and months and years, is what carries the seed through germination into maturity.  And for that, time is the only necessity. 

As I look back over my blog entries of the past year, I see my own evolution.  Any reader can see the shifts in topic, the changes in frequency, the adjustment of tone.  I alone also know the underlying struggles and revelations that have transformed me along the way.  Over time, I have not run out of things to think and write about, but whatever it was in me that required the sort of healing provided by this blog feels whole again.  The questions and hurdles of my current relationship feel too intimate for a public forum.  And they should -- it is by sharing both the troubled and calm waters of a relationship that two people develop depth and connection between them.  It is the shared secrets of partnership that bond people across space and time and the quiet, gentle understanding of love that opens us as lotus petals. 

So, this will be my last blog post for the foreseeable future.  Over time, I hope to continue to evolve as an individual and to nurture the growth of the new energetic force of love in my life.  And I will, because I am the decisive element. 

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"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."


Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)