michelangelo_quote01My mom wasn’t the best at explaining things or going into the details.  Not good with teaching much either unless you could “keep up” because she had a dozen things to do all at once and they all needed to get done and I needed to keep out of her way or get run over.  So when she would respond at all to questions about why she was doing this, that or the other, she would often say “Well, it’s not going to make itself, is it?”  Over time I found out that, as dismissive as that is, it’s also true enough.

There are times when we need to stop waiting for the right time, the right moment, the perfect configuration of events, and stop waiting for the world to hand us a round tuit.  If we want the life we deserve, if we want to be the person we know we can be, if we want that goal, then we need to start acting like it.  That perfect life of ours won’t make itself.  The thing is, like building a house, like becoming proficient at a martial art, baking bread, learning to dance, it takes time, it takes effort, it takes patience and persistence.  Getting the life we want is rarely like setting up a pup tent with the elastic rope in the poles.  To get quality you have to put in quality.  To make a change you have to be willing to change.

To me, a change of this nature feels a bit like being a sculptor.  Inside the raw material, the life so far, the habits and assumptions and “that’s just the way I am” is the real person waiting to be introduced to the world outside.  Each action taken to achieve that goal exposes just a bit more of the person, one little action at a time, a chip here, a buff there, until the form begins to appear.  It’s not easy, it’s not fool proof, it’s risky and breathtaking and agonizing and wondrous, and in the end, who we really are can walk free of the dross and start living.
