Well Alive

Magazine

There is something very special about being seen from a distance.

I was talking with a friend I hadn’t seen for some years, and he told me that he had watched my waves in life from afar.

That made me happy.

Not because he thought I was doing well.Not because he admired how I handled things.

Because he saw the waves.

I think one of the biggest lies in the personal-development world is the idea that growth eventually makes us stable. That if we learn enough, heal enough, practise enough, we somehow arrive at this permanently centred version of ourselves.

I don’t believe that anymore. And I’m not sure I ever did.

Sometimes what we call “growth” is simply becoming very good at performing the character of someone who has their life together.

I don’t.

I have tools. I have knowledge. I have years of studying human behaviour. And I have lived enough life to know that none of that exempts me from being human.

Actually, the opposite has happened.

The more I study, the less interested I am in performing wisdom.

The more tools I have, the less I want to use them to hide my humanity.

I change my mind.I get things wrong.I get tired.I get excited.I disappear into myself sometimes.I come back.I surf some waves well and get completely knocked over by others.

I am not trying to become a person without waves.

I am stubbornly trying to remain a person inside them.

So thank you, my friend.

For watching from a distance and still seeing the human.

The one surfing, falling, learning, laughing, trying again.

Still here.

Still human.