Growing Pains

It can be hard here, sometimes. You make a friend, you become close, you have someone who shares your views and sentiments, and for a while everything is grand … until you realize they're heading off to someplace you cannot follow. 

Now, you are genuinely happy for them, to see their growth and increased contentment… but still, you can't help feeling a little left behind. It's a bit like being the last of your high school gang to leave for college. Your friends have gone off on an adventure and, while you know your own will start shortly… right at this moment, you're cooling your heels -- alone.

And being alone gives you too much time to think.

Would a different path be better? Not to keep up with your friends but maybe a different way would allow for more growth? Is it fear that keeps your feet pointed in their current direction, or are you genuinely on the right path?

SP has ventured that if I would let myself experience certain things, he thinks I would be liberated, more free to be truly myself. But the person he thinks I could be is no one I'm drawn to. Not because I'm scared (that I'm aware of anyhow,) it just doesn't feel right. 

I trust his vision of possibilities, I simply don't agree with it.

Yet, I worry.

I'm pretty comfortable with marching to the beat of my own drummer but there are times when I wonder if what I'm hearing is just emotional tinnitus. 

     Maybe I have boxed myself in.

     Maybe I should force my life into discomfort and see what happens.

I don't particularly want to… I've found that life itself can throw you enough curve balls to keep you dancing for years. It doesn't need any help.

And while change and upset certainly foster growth, I think I do pretty well at not stagnating even in an unrocked boat. But maybe I'm being complacent...?

So I fall back on reminding myself that things generally work out for the best.
It's a precept that has stood me in good stead these many years.
Yet I wonder...