I was having a soul food lunch with a friend who was sharing about her transformative experience with her spiritual teacher. She shared about the layers she shed, the massive openings in her heart, her presence. As deep work tends to be, it was grueling and maturing. Then her teacher comes up to her, all soft and satisfied and says…

You’ve come so far.

Delight

And you have so far to go.

Thunk.

And isn’t that just how life goes?

We’ve each got such textured stories, each one with its own version of heartache and heroism— each one utterly ordinary and epic. We’ve come so far. I can feel the distance I’ve traveled at my back, holding my seat of experience, the spine of my knowing. My grandmother’s hands are in my hands, her story informing my own.

Looking beyond into that mysterious future, I am a baby. I am toddling wide eyed. I am wrestling and tumbling and giggling with this moment. I’m leaning off a high branch of a trusted tree and I really have no idea who I shall become.

And yet I’m becoming.

What is this collective shame about having so far to go? What is that? Can you feel that rippling through us?

I should be better. I should be further along. I should know more. I must show, prove…

Oh dear friends, I have so very far to go. What lucky souls we are, getting to travel this one together.