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| Tipping Point |
I am, once again, at a very familiar place in my life. I am pulling back from externals and moving deeply into my internal space. This is a behavioral pattern I know well, having learned when I was very young that silence and hiding meant safety. As a child I almost perfected the art of becoming invisible. I found that I could pull in my energy and pass through rooms full of people undetected. Becoming a whole person has meant in part, that I let go of that automatic reflex learned so well in childhood, without letting go of the value in that ability.
I haven’t had a ‘need’ to hide away and be silent for a long, long time. My personal safety is no longer threatened. However, some things learned in childhood feel as though they are imprinted on our souls. Perhaps in a sense they are, and we spend our lives surpassing those sticky limitations . . . (or not). The person we become by adapting to our family of origin dynamics can actually feel like our true self. There were years of my life when I struggled to know who I really was under all the layers of my defended self. I could not discern when I was retreating into my inner landscape from reflex, or when I withdrew and moved within from conscious choice.
I don’t know exactly when it happened that I gradually began to be at choice about taking time for reflection from a centered, healthy place rather than a place of reactive fear. It’s been like gentle raindrops filling a barrel . . . early on it was hard for me to imagine that the day would ever come when the rain barrel would fill. Then one day, after what felt like the longest uphill climb possible, I noticed a little crack in my automatic reflex to withdraw, like a tiny rivulet of water spilling over the brim of the barrel. There was just a drop or two that tipped the balance. Looking into the barrel I could never identify that individual drop that made the difference. All become part of the whole. I think it’s much the same with human growth and development.
We each slog through the stuff of our wounded souls that we brought with us, and the baggage we picked up along the way. Bit by bit we take it out, turn it around, feel it, kick and scream a bit, then hide it away. Depending on a whole host of factors we do this over and over again until one day we take a bit out and have the capacity to truly be with that particular terror, insult, shame, fear . . . and, “God willin’ and the creek don’t rise” . . . we heal. Somewhere in the quiet of the night we might, each of us, hear the gentle sound of water breaching the top and spilling over the side of our barrel, vanishing into the soil of life.
A few days ago, submerged in my internal space of quiet reflection, we in the US celebrated the fourth of July. I was keenly aware of what the day commemorated and found I had tears filling my eyes several times during that day. Since then I’ve been thinking about the similarities of the growth of an individual and the growth of a nation made up of individuals. Perhaps we are here to liberate ourselves, that living fully is a matter of actualizing personal freedom. Freedom is what this celebration is supposed to be about.
I have strong memories of fourth of July celebrations when I was a kid growing up in Chicago, which just might be the center of the American heartland. The fourth of July was big stuff. During the last days of the school year we colored paper flags and read stories about the heroism of our founding fathers. I made sure I had blue shorts, red tee shirt and white ribbons for my hair as I rode my bike around our neighborhood having carefully threaded red, white, and blue crepe paper streamers through the spokes of my wheels. It was a grand community event that started with picnics, volleyball & baseball games and kids running everywhere in the city park. Families staked out spots with blankets early in the day and by the time it got dark, were snuggled up in towels and sweatshirts and extra blankets ready for the big show.
The show was enchanting . . . each year it was a one-time magical experience for the entire community. Everyone seemed to know what the birthday party was about. Looking back I remember the pre-firework address by the mayor and a moment of silence to appreciate the good fortune of being born and living in this great land. When it was over, parents gathered up the remains from the festivities and carried exhausted children to their cars. Sticky hands and faces were washed, pajamas put on and that was the end of it.
Clearly things have changed, but what hasn’t changed is the underlying origins of this day, The Declaration of Independence. I re-read it this year and was struck anew with the fact that it was a declaration, not a realized state of independence. A declaration that pledged the lives, worldly goods and sacred honor of all who signed. I’ve been thinking about that ever since. Signing the declaration could very well have been a death sentence and most probably a willing donation of any and all goods needed by the cause . . . horses, shelter, food supplies, young adults to fight alongside other young adults and husbands. They were true patriots giving their lives for a worthy cause, the one thing that meant more than all the abundance in the new world . . . freedom.
We have had freedom alongside affluence without, perhaps, understanding the fragility of those things. We are a nation accustomed to instant gratification, comfortable with debt, and lacking in awareness of our place in a global community. We have taken what we’ve wanted from wherever we could find it with little or no regard for the impact of our actions further down the road. Perhaps only now are we getting a view into the bottom of the ugly hole of severed relations, closed possibilities, and debt we have dug. Will pointing our fingers to place blame help? I don’t think so. If we live here, both you and I are to some degree part of the systemic difficulties, no matter how we endeavor to live otherwise.
My hope is that individually, as well as nationally we can begin to honor where we came from. May we be inspired by the courage of our ancestors to dig deeply into our lives and liberate ourselves from the bondage of our wounds and insecurities that drive our greed and intolerance. May we question how we have lived with our heritage, and begin a genuine assessment of what’s working, and what is not working. Perhaps as we take steps to heal ourselves, we can take the steps needed to crawl out of the deep hole of our indulgence. We would do well to consider the legacy we are leaving for future generations as our forebears did for us. They signed the declaration first as individuals, and secondly as a unified community. We could follow their example by seeking personal liberation in our thinking and our actions with awareness and concern for the greater community locally and globally. It’s never too late for freedom.
We have strong roots of stunning courage. Roots of men and women who labored hard and bled out their lives so we could have autonomy. We who have known the precious state of freedom are among the most fortunate in the world. We have had choice, opportunity and an abundance of resources in this amazing land, a continent that has given so much. The fourth of July . . . remember what it means. Freedom is fragile. Freedom has come to each one of us at a great cost. Let us cherish it, and never allow greed, and instant gratification to blur the true wealth we inherited from our forebears.
On the fourth of July . . . on the fifth of July . . . for that matter, on every day of every year let freedom ring . . .
That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .
About the painting . . . The tipping point is the moment of change. On a personal level it can mean the beginning of liberation from the deep place of human suffering known to all. The light breaks through the dark impacted origins of our human bondage opening a possibility for personal sovereignty, and freedom. The crack in the wall is the drop of water that causes the barrel to overflow. It is the moment of release when we are able to proceed into life with a new level of awareness, a new level of freedom. The “Tipping Point” is very much like a signature on the Declaration of Independence . . . the beginning of a new state of reality.