The Rebuild

A Shape I Didn't Expect

“The light is generous.”

- John O’Donohue

I have written before about how life sometimes places things in front of us that force a pause. But there are other times when it feels like life just cracks us open.

It’s not gentle in a way that makes us ask for a breath, but the kind that makes you stop and wonder what the hell is going on — the kind of collective moments that add up and make you take stock of not only where you are, but where you’re heading.

I recently ran into one of these moments. It didn’t just resemble a fork in the road, it felt like a fork in which each direction came with its own cracks.

I can go this way… but.

And if I go that way… well.

It felt like choices that weren’t really choices.

I could feel it in my bones, in my breath, and in those quiet moments both before and after the sun comes up.

And then —

I came through it.

“Whatever opens us is never what we expect, yet it is always what we need for the next step of our becoming.”

- Mark Nepo

Gratitude shows up first, it always does. But just behind it was something I didn’t expect, and certainly nothing I had planned for. And because of it, I didn’t want this to become another “phew” moment, or a quiet shrug, or a near-miss I’d tuck away and forget.

When you run into a moment like this in life, you don’t want to return to the everyday unchanged. Something is being asked of us.

Now I’m thinking of it as a simple invitation, though not an easy one: don’t go back to sleep!

Don’t drift into the same habit-forming rhythms.

Don’t become numb to the familiar routines.

Don’t treat recent events as a narrow escape.

Look at it as a doorway.

Because the truth is: I don’t want to repair the cracks — not exactly, not this time.

I don’t think life is looking for just another restoration project. I think life is asking me to build again, but with a little more intention. More presence. A better understanding that precious is connected to ordinary, and ordinary can happen every single day. And that’s a good thing.

I’m playing around in the studio again. I’m carving new lines — literally and figuratively. I’ve started doing some white-line block printing, minor hand wounds and all.

And with this, I’m reminded that once a cut is made, it can’t be uncut. But I can build around the change. I can accept what’s in front of me and work with the shape that now exists. And somehow, even when the new shape is the result of a mistake, it becomes the heart of the piece.

And maybe when life cracks us open, it’s so the rebuilding can take place. It’s an opportunity not to return to the old form, but to discover one we were always meant to grow into.

I’m not just sensing a shift, I’m feeling it. There is a chance here for a new direction. Not one filled with urgency, not with fear, just more clarity.

We don’t have many moments like this in a lifetime. Often, there is no such moment at all. But if and when they arrive, it’s to wake us, steady us, even rearrange us.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be handed one, I don’t want to waste it.

I want to walk through this doorway and carry it forward, not as a reminder of what almost happened, but as a compass for what comes next.

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”

- Pema Chödrön

Talk soon…

G