We live in a culture obsessed with before and afters. Stories of someone going from being homeless to jet-setting from mansion to mansion. Unhappy dysfunctional relationships to happily-ever after head over heels in love. Unhealthy, sick and immobile to running marathons or climbing mountains.
Even our favorite spiritual leaders often tell us a before and after story:
Depressed and anxious to joyful and at ease.
Frazzled and dysregulated to calm and accepting.
Once you start looking for these “transformations,” you’ll see them everywhere.
The beauty of before and after is that it highlights growth. The danger is that it assumes there’s a finished state – an after.
Don’t get me wrong, transformation is a beautiful thing! But it’s also a bit of a myth…
There is no before and after.
There is only then.
And now.
Who you were then.
Who you are now.
Always in movement.
Always transforming.
When we enter into growth journeys expecting that one day we will wake up, and say, “That’s it! I made it, I’m at the end of my growth,” we set ourselves up for disappointment and we invite stuckness. We’re telling the universe that we’re only comfortable with growth if it’s short-term and has a clear beginning and end.
You know what the universe says to that?!
LOL.
Honey, believe me, I’ve tried to cross that finish line of spiritual enlightenment and total life satisfaction so many times and each time I find there is so much more to learn! To shift! To explore!
But the journey gets more and more beautiful. It takes more out of us but it gives so much more back. If I had stopped seeking the first time I made a big change, I would have missed out on so much. I didn’t even realize how much possibility there was out there waiting for me to find it and uncover it. Even now, I learn and seek and stretch every day. I’m open to growth — even uncomfortable growth! — everyday.
What you are moving towards might be so BIG, so radiant, so full of cosmic potential, that you can’t even fathom it right now. So don’t be too quick to name your “after.”
Just keep waking up, doing the work, stretching forwards and upwards. The universe will do the rest.
