It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end. (LeGuin)
There’s an old saying that “the more naps you take, the more awakenings you experience.” Since that’s kinda trite if you just take it literally, I reckon it must have something to tell us about our very human tendency to “fall asleep,” to forget those lessons we’ve learned earlier, and thusly, end up repeating the same old mistakes again and again. Whether in our relationships, our finances, our choices, our boundaries (or lack thereof), we do seem to find ourself repeating old unpleasant (why don’t we ever repeat the pleasant ones??) patterns again and again.
But maybe that’s the way we grow, and we could never become more conscious about making healthy choices without repeating those patterns, and taking those steps on our paths that our feet find hard to walk. And on the next spiral of change in our lives, we’ll know more, we’ll be more capable of choosing differently.
So the next time that you, like me, find yourself ready to bang your head against the wall in frustration at yourself for repeating old patterns, be a bit more gentle about those “naps” that create awakenings into a deeper, more profound awareness.