11
Allow for Expansion

I want to unfold. Let no place in me hold itself closed for where I am closed, I am false.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours

Our back patio is one of my favorite spaces in our home. You already know I like going there for some soul time now and then. I also like meeting houseguests out there for morning coffee. Steve and I put the kids to bed and head out there with a charcuterie plate and a glass of wine and talk into the night. I like staying up late with friends and family, perched on that patio. The bricks and the wrought iron and the view and the breeze in the palms all seem to work together to get us all talking—first about sports, let’s say, then about theology, and then, always, later into the evening, the language shifts to soul talk, which is probably why I love that patio so much.

If you were sitting on my back patio with me at my favorite time of day—dusk—you would see a thousand different skies between twilight and darkness. And you’d see a thousand different views of the trees and the hills and the city below because, as the light changes, the landscape changes. And in that sacred space suspended between the ground below and the sky above, you see that the same thing can look a hundred different ways, all of which will catch your breath.

I’ve been reading a fascinating book called Yearnings by Rabbi Irwin Kula.1 He says one of our greatest longings as humans is to know exactly who we are, to go on a quest to identify that one elusive True Self we need to be living from.

I have at times in my life been obsessed with this idea. If I can just identify the me I am supposed to be, then I can live freely and wildly as I was made to live. This has proven problematic because as soon as I attempt to define this one, enduring “me,” I immediately see that there are many different aspects to me. Like you, I’m not one self. I am a strange amalgamation of different, sometimes seemingly contradictory selves: athlete, creator, nurturer, ideator, homemaker, extrovert, introvert, football fan, poetry lover. I’ve often erroneously believed I must trade each of these in for the next, instead of learning the fine art of embracing all these different aspects of my identity, letting each of them inform the collective me that is becoming.

I am no longer a college athlete, but today I need to honor aspects of that fierce competitor, that confident leader, that hard worker, that gym rat. I don’t just ditch her for the new-and-improved model. She is still with me, wanting to help me with the responsibilities in front of me today.

The temptation for me is to say, “That is no longer me; this is now me” and abandon parts of myself as irrelevant or no longer. Kula challenged my thinking about identity when he said we will never be able to identify our one permanent self. In fact, the Hebrew word for life—hayim—is actually plural: lives. He suggests, then, that we are a dynamic unfolding of many selves.

Let me give you an example: Steve is a military man, through and through. He joined the Navy because he wanted to serve his country and he still feels compelled to serve. Another side of Steve would love to live on one million acres with a farmhouse and a pond and animals. He would tend this land and he would harvest animals for our food. He’d hang prosciutto and he’d pour wine. He’d line up tables under the trees and he’d invite people to come try wild game or raw cheese. He’d talk into the night about how he hunted and harvested and then prepared every bite. He’d talk about the wines he’d paired and why. He’d tell stories, if anyone wanted to hear. He’d light a fire and invite anyone and everyone to stay as long as they could.

Steve is as much warrior as he is farmer. He is as much father as he is host. I promise you. He speaks French and he shoots guns. He is an executive-level leader and he wants to homeschool our kids personally. He makes homemade stock, loves Twain, and fills our house with taxidermy. He’s a complicated individual, and doing life next to such a nuanced human being has given me more and more permission to be that way too.

I think we all have something inside us that needs to come out. Maybe it’s words. Maybe it’s pottery. Maybe it’s the most gorgeous meal. Maybe it’s a new business model. Maybe it’s an herb garden. Maybe it’s a marketing strategy. We have things locked or trapped down in the annals of our soul and we need the glorious midwives of this world to help us birth those things that are pressing on us, asking to be released. If Steve pigeonholed himself into being only one version of himself, he, our family and friends, and the world would miss out on the fascinating fullness that is Steve Tankersley.

I’ve been through seasons when I felt like I was losing myself. Most of those seasons were defined by my anxious over-responsibility, which led me to believe the free and wild parts of me were gone forever.

If I would have known then what I know now, I would have realized I was expanding, not necessarily losing. Expansions can be so drastic that they feel disorienting. A new facet of me was arriving. One I had to meet and embrace and get to know. I was going through an incredible change, but that didn’t mean other parts of me were being replaced.

Allow yourself to become, to expand. Don’t feed the temptation to replace your selves. Expand your self. Don’t be afraid of all these parts of you. Welcome the mother in you even as you are overwhelmed by her responsibilities. Welcome the achiever in you instead of rejecting her as soulless. Welcome the sensual in you instead of demonizing pleasure. Welcome the artist in you instead of believing she must be defunct now that you are running a household. We are both complete and becoming. Let yourself expand.

I keep wondering if one of the things God had in mind when he put Adam and Eve in the garden was giving them a space where they had the freedom to explore, experience, enjoy. I keep wondering if this is how God created us: to give things a whirl, to experiment with different ideas of who and what we might want to do and be, and to allow ourselves to expand exponentially.

Letting myself expand is a divine letting go. Allowing myself to become more, welcoming those shifts and shake-ups is about something of great wonder. I guess I’ve tried to squeeze my identity into some very tight boxes. Boxes about what it meant to be good, loved, to belong. And instead of judging all this—which I am prone to do—expanding is about welcoming even the boxes I chose and seeing that we are always, in our very feeble and flawed ways, trying to heal ourselves.

Do not fall into the trap of having to narrowly define yourself. You are not a brand, an image, or a product. You are an ever-expanding self, a Created You, which is infinite in its iterations.

The same landscape looks different depending on the light—none of which is truer than the others. A thousand different looks, all of which are poetry.

Reflection & Expression

Have you rejected, left behind, forgotten parts of yourself that may want or need to be reclaimed? Make a list of the different “selves” that go into creating your whole self. For example, your mother self, athlete self, artist self, etc.

If you had four hours to do anything you wanted to do, what would you do?

For Your Brazen Board

Find an image that represents one or more of the many selves that make up who you are.