“The glassblower knows: while in the heat of beginning,

any shape is possible. Once hardened, the only way to change is 

to break.” — The Book Of Awakening, Mark Nepo.

I’ve wondered all of my life is fully grown people can really change, and if so, how much. What I am coming to see is that I can change and did change, and am changing still.

I tend to my problems at the deepest level, and if I can truly be aware and honest, then I can leave few scars or at least small ones. I wonder if anyone can be truly aware and honest all the time, I’m not there yet.

But I’m a lot closer than I was.

The big shock of my life was that it is, in fact, possible to change my story late in life and to repair and refresh the damage done early on in life. I am putting together a new story, one for the next phase of my life.

I live less and less in the past; I think less and less of hurt but the richness of my life now. The more I do that, the more I crowd out the pain and recycling. I don’t need either.

There is less edge to my life, less anger, less fear, less grievance, and judgment.  A friend says I have always been testy and soft at the same time, confusing but interesting. You are, he said, walled around the exterior, pretty squishy inside.

I have been experimenting with acceptance. Some people will get me; some won’t. Some people will like me; some won’t. Some people will hear me; some won’t.

This is not a cause for hatred or argument but a fresh opportunity for acceptance. Acceptance has become a big idea in my life; it has been good for me, an influential teacher. I do not need to argue about my life or defend it.

My task is to live if fully and meaningfully.

“We can return and begin again by facing ourselves,” writes Nepo. “in this way, we can go below our hardened ways to the soft impulses that birth them. Instead of breaking the bone of our fear, we can cleanse the blood of our feeling unsafe.

Instead of counting the scars from being hurt in the world, we can find and re-kiss the very spots in our soul where be began to withhold our trust.”

I like the glassblower idea, especially as I begin to be old. The soul does tend to harden as we grow up and navigate the hills and bumps of life. We argue instead of talk; we hide behind nostalgia and the way it was.

We find ways to hamstrung and demean the young as lazy and lost, rather than to encourage and celebrate their energy.

And I love the idea of kissing the very spots in my soul, where I began to withhold trust.

I have experienced the idea of going below these old wounds and seeing them in a new way. I have worked hard to challenge the “hardened” parts of me, and soften them, or look at them in a fresh way.

Instead of my spirit turning brittle, I bend. Once hardened, the only way to change is to break.

But if I am willing to go deep and change – and I am –  I see that anything is possible.