When Scaffolding Over Stays its Welcome

Potential: Trevor’s translator in SA. After 8 years in prison, this guy is now running a group of young entrepreneurs

“I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier…..about your book and how you feel about its seeming failure and how hard it is to have the confidence to write again…….”

I waited for Judy’s conclusion with the delighted expectancy of someone who has been offered a key to some hidden treasure of wisdom. What came next wasn’t what I expected.

“I think it’s your ego. That’s why you’re struggling to write again”

 What could I say? She wasn’t attacking me, she wasn’t scoring points, she wasn’t trying to cut me down to size. She said the words from a place that I knew was free of her own ego, so I could only receive it and take it to a place within myself where I could process it. And I already knew she was right.

No one wants to admit to their ego being the obstacle. Ego, that provisional self that is so useful in the way that scaffolding is useful in building a house, but so unhelpful when it gets so attached to itself that it thinks it is the house. Ego, that self that demands to be comforted when it feels bruised, protected when it feels attacked, kept on its pedestal when it’s feeling diminished and fed when it feels hungry.

 

Miles from her roots in the Eastern Cape of S.A, this young girl is full of awesome potential

So why am I writing about ego on this eve of a new year? It’s linked to a book Jane & I are reading, the latest by Elizabeth Gilbert (she of Eat, Pray, Love fame) and it's all about creativity and fear. 

And it’s gently opening – or should I say re-opening - our eyes. We realised as we read, that we hadn’t blogged for a long time, that Jane hadn’t been drawing for a long time and that I hadn’t been writing or working up new ideas. We are both very creative people who had stopped being creative. Not totally, but largely, especially in the ways that are core to who we are. Did we stop because we decided to stop? No, it was because of…..well…..life. Life just demanded its daily work to be done and the work of creativity got put the bottom of the pile. And of course the problem with things that go to the bottom of the pile is that you never get to the things at the bottom of the pile.

Potential: beautiful, talented, beach artists in Kenya

 I have been reflecting a lot in the past month about potential. The place where all our programs with Emerging Leaders begin is with calling to young peoples potential.  I think I have always been passionate about potential and always sought to face down my own self-limiting demons, in order to allow myself to become as big as I can be. How big am I? How big can I be? I have no idea, but I’m sure there is no limit to that journey of discovery while I am willing to continue to take it.

So many things are coming together in my mind. Huge reservoirs of potential that need unlocking. Sleeping potential that needs waking up, needs someone calling out, to wake it up.  A brain that is hard wired for something more, a bigger story, a story of being an answer to the world’s issues not part of its problems. A life that needs some one to model a way of living that fulfill its potential, that breathes life and hope (inspires), into others that they might possibly be able to do the same. 

Potential waits to be set free and we hold the key (Kenya training@Simba farm)

Limiting mindsets keep us small, like scaffolding that hides the real but fragile building, protecting it from exposure to unkind weather or the gaze of people who might not like the unveiled house.

So, on the eve of 2016 let me recover the full practicing of what I preach, the exploration of what I feel passionate about, the mining of that creative jewel inside. 
Let me not just ‘do’ 2016....let me live it, explore it, sail it, mine it, run with it, fall over and scrape my knees on it and get up a little stronger to drink it more deeply and eat it more voraciously. 

Joseph and his street boys in SA - he sees their vast potential

Dawna Markova’s wonderful poem begins “I will not die an unlived life”. Let it be said at the end of 2016 that 'I lived'. That I wasn’t ruled by fear of failure or death or shame or looking stupid. Let me not be guilty of failing to discover more of my potential. Let me not be guilty of my ego being the reason why I didn’t try to write another book (real or metaphorically) because the last one quietly bombed. 

And let me not be guilty of failing to waste a moment where I can be modeling, calling out, and waking up many others to their own awesome potential this year.

- TW