Imagine a handful of coins spread across a tabletop. Only one side of each coin faces up. The other side is hidden. Our lives, our habits, consist of the same spread of coins, facing the same way up, over and over…unless we’re willing to flip.
The comfortable side of the coin tends to land facing up. What’s below, what faces the tabletop, is the dark side. But it’s only your dark side, not The Dark Side. A coin is not possible without two sides. There’s no right side or wrong side of you.
Try holding only one side of a coin. Ain’t gonna happen.
I tend toward rowdy optimism. I know how to be a good friend. I can break big tasks down into little ones and reach a goal. But I also cry my heart out in the shower, miss the friends who left because I wasn’t willing to change, and lose my way.
None of those flip sides are down sides. Crying clears the soul and recycles emotions, staying true to oneself is worth the loss of a friendship, and astonishing discoveries can be made by stumbling through the underbrush.
Gamble on yourself. Flip a coin.
Your sides aren’t dark and light. They’re this and that. See the whole of you without rejecting the parts, no matter how unfamiliar or uncomfortable the flip sides seem. Your task is not to delve under the dark side of the coin, like a hiding bug, but to get used to flipping the coin so both sides get light.
Explore the other side. Make some change.
{ PEP TALKS deliver a bracing blast of Grace }
Flickr photo: Rome – Trevi Fountain “Coins” – by David Paul Ohmer
Related reading: Pep Talk | Revise the Story, The Power of Equal and Opposite Forces
7 Comments
Bravo Grace!
More and more people I’m encountering are facing change and living in fear of it. And a huge part of that fear is that dicotomy between The Light and The Dark. They’re making an untrue assumption: if it’s change it has to be bad.
It’s not. It’s really not. It’s just different from what you’re used to. Look at it, face-to-face, mano-a-mano. See for yourself.
In 5th grade, the boys from my class would go across the street at lunchtime into the empty field and catch lizards. They would bring them back, shove them in the faces of the girls who would scream and run away. I was new to the school, and the game, and I thought that screaming and running away was a huge waste of time and energy. So I looked at the lizard. It was very cool.
I joined the boys in catching lizards. Which put an end to the whole thing — seems it’s not “lady-like” to romp across an empty field and catch lizards, so lizard-catching was banned, school-wide.
But now I think of facing my fear as looking at the lizard.
Change is an invigorating and creative happening. Not something full of darkness and fear.
Jo, how cool is it that as early as 5th grade you set your own standards for behaviour rather than following the “shoulds” you saw around you (“girls should run from the beastly boys and their lizards”).
LOL! And I was raised by a very *should* mother very concerned with “what *will* the neighbors think?”
In high school, freshman had to wear beanies. When confronted by anyone upper class, esp seniors, one had to drop one’s books on the ground and sing the school song. A half-day of that and I realized that the only way *they* knew I was a freshman was the beanie. So I took mine off. No problems!
LOL!
I love your rowdy optimism, and you are not just a good friend, you are an AMAZING STUPENDOUS WONDERFUL friend.
I flip for you on either side!
Andrea – Okay, now you’ve gone and done it. You’ve got me thinking of “Rowdy Optimist” as a job title, so now I’m itching to produce a new business card. I’m laughing myself out of my chair here. Thank you for being so undeniably and unequivocally and unabashedly pro-me. I feel the same way about you.
And regarding business cards, for our move to the island (5 days and counting! urgk!), I made up some business cards I’ve been handing out to everyone there:
Grace Kerina
Your Secret ingredient
Co-edit – Quickly improve your writing
Research – Creative sleuthing on your behalf
Organize – Tailor-made systems that work for you
Manage – Coordinate and administrat your project
Solve – Generate creative options to move you forward
[+ phone number and contact info]
It’ll be fun to see what happens. The island only has 5000 people on it, so I’m interested to see how quickly my new networks start forming.
Join the Gabriola Facebook group – 664 members!
Hi, everyone.
Thanks for all your good wishes. Our sore muscles and adrenaline-fatigued selves are flopping around on the various couches today doing nothing much except cataloguing the great show out the long bank of windows (a red sailboat, five kayakers, a seaplane…). Thanks for your patience, too. I’ll be back again with posting starting next week.
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