Behind the Puddle

I wonder how long it takes before we realize we’ve become someone different. Probably longer than the becoming itself. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide I was going to become a person who knows whether the bird feeders are full. I certainly never planned to become emotionally invested in the daily activities of a squirrel.

I didn’t expect to recognize individual herons, wonder about a turtle I couldn’t find, or become concerned when the usual visitors didn’t appear. I definitely didn’t imagine I would spend so much time sitting behind a puddle and thinking about life. Yet here we are. Somewhere between the first morning on the patio and today, I became someone who notices things I didn’t notice before.

It wasn’t because I decided I should, but because I kept showing up. Maybe that’s how much of becoming happens. It happens quietly.

We tend to imagine personal change as something intentional. We decide who we want to become. We set goals, make plans, start something, stop something, choose a word for the year, or buy a notebook. There is nothing wrong with any of that.

But I think some of the biggest changes in us happen without an announcement. We become through what we experience, the people we love, what we lose, what surprises us, and the disappointments we endure. We also become through ordinary routines, unexpected responsibilities, conversations, silence, and things we survive that we would never have volunteered to learn from.

Sometimes we become softer or stronger. Sometimes we become more cautious or braver. Sometimes we become tired, and sometimes we become more willing to rest. We may even become someone who can finally appreciate something that an earlier version of ourselves couldn’t see.

I think we have a tendency to look backward and imagine that all the previous versions of ourselves should have known what we know now. They couldn’t because they hadn’t lived this part yet. The person I was a year ago had not experienced this year. The person I was ten years ago couldn’t possibly have understood everything that would happen between there and here.

The person sitting behind the puddle today doesn’t know everything the person I will become will someday understand. Maybe we’re not supposed to. The trees don’t seem embarrassed that they aren’t already displaying their autumn colors. They are becoming.

The young geese aren’t failing because they aren’t quite adults. They are becoming. September isn’t an incomplete version of October. It is exactly where the season is now.

Maybe I can offer myself the same grace. I don’t have to have everything figured out. I don’t have to be finished. I don’t even have to know exactly who I am becoming.

There are still experiences ahead of me that will change what I understand. There are people I haven’t met and things I will learn. There are things I will have to release. There are also things I don’t know yet that I will love.

Maybe becoming isn’t a project we complete. Maybe it is what happens because we continue living. It happens one ordinary day, one unexpected lesson, and one changing season at a time.

Perhaps, instead of always asking whether I have finally become the person I am supposed to be, I can recognize something gentler. I am still becoming. We all are.