When Courage is Difficult
How to take another step
The road we must travel and the things we do each day are often two different things. Our work, family duties, and other responsibilities to our communities are often either obligations or activities. Many times they do not constitute the steps that toward where we need to go, the path we must take. Rather, at times they are distractions to the road and the journey. Even if the destination is unclear, there is something that is totally beyond just ourselves that needs to be traversed. And in moving beyond that we find ourselves restored.
The road is a path toward who we truly are our fullest selves, our humanity. Work is good and is needed for us to survive, but there is more than work. If that work helps us become who we are, we should do the work, but the work in itself is not the purpose. If we are aware of how the work can form us, then we can use the work to help develop who we are as persons. When work becomes exhausting and meaningless, when we become bitter and resentful, when it causes unhealthy behaviors then we are not on the path, but far away from it.
The Puritan work ethic was to sanctify work, to put work on the level of holy mission. Everyone can be a clergy person through the diligence of their work. The hard line between the sacred and the profane soften with this movement. But work then became twelve hour days and toil without purpose other than to make money, to cover up insecurity, to avoid family, to cover pain. Time off for leisure, self-reflection, personal care, and enjoyment of what work can bring became apostate. Sabbath, vacation or holiday, deep rest, good sleep, were no longer the paths to where we truly want to be.
David Whyte’s “Just Beyond Yourself” reminds us that if we want to take the next step, it is “Just beyond/yourself” and “It’s where/you need/to be.” It is not that self is not important. The opposite, self is found in the next step where there is “self-forgetting” and that restoration will take place “by what you’ll meet.” Just as Jesus said what when we lose ourselves we will find it, this poem echos the sentiment that we are not all we think we are without stepping into who we can be. Without the journey of aban- doning can we obtain. Without the letting go will we receive.
Coming from a refugee family, we know intimately what abandoning means: leaving country, home, family, possessions, to be wanders of this earth, even in the United States. When letting go becomes a way of life, the few things that we have, honor and dignity can’t be given at any cost. Shame is death. So, this call to abandon self is a death threat. It goes against every dear. But the homeless Rabbi knew that was the path.
Whyte tenderly writes that we know the correct road because when we see “the two sides/ of it” converge in the distance and it connects deep in the “foundation” of our own hearts. What is ahead of us ties into the where we are right now. We all know deep within life desires to flourish, to grow beyond itself. Our bodies do that naturally. It takes 7-10 years for all of our sells to be renewed. Skin cells shed every few weeks. Our skeleton will regenerate about every fifteen years. By that time the body then is not the same body now. Physically, we are becoming different people. The path that is true for us is one that beckons us to become fully the person that we can be.
The good news is that this path does not have to be taken alone, or is something completely charted out. As we look forward, we know what to do now. As we see what is for us on the horizon, we can know the next actionable plan, the way forward. But sometimes where the line ahead is hazy, but this is where the rest and reflection should take place. Reflection is looking in a mirror. It is to see ourselves and where our souls reside now. If we get distracted or off track then all we need to do is look at the horizon and back toward the core of our being, to the horizon and back.
For a modest subscription fee, you can read the continuation of this article, called “The Journey of a Thousand Miles.”