Lose SIght of Your Shore to Grow

"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore." — Andre Gide

My home was built somewhere in the 1920s to 1930s era, likely by the original owner with whatever skills he and his helpers had with materials they could find. It was the era of the Great Depression. Money was hard to come by and people made good use of what they could find. Yes, they were doing recycling and reusing before it was about saving the planet.

In the early 1990s my dad agreed to do some renovations on the house. Well, it was more like a complete redo of the interior. Dad wasn’t a builder by trade but he’d taught himself how to do the work when my parents bought an unfinished home as their first home. Since then he’d continued to learn through doing repairs and upgrades.

We soon figured out to do the work effectively in my home, he was going to need to gut rooms pretty much to the studs. One of the jobs he was doing was replacing the 30 amp electrical service the house had with a 200 amp service. He ripped out all the old wiring and replaced it with updated materials. All the insulation had to come out. Decisions had to be made how to ‘fix’ some of the more major misbuilds like walls out of square.

It was while he was ripping out the plaster and lathe in my half-story we discovered the detail about scavenged material being used. Dad found some charred boards. At first we thought there had been a fire until he realized he couldn’t find a line of fire, the boards were in different spots. Having grown up during the Depression, dad realized what had happened. Wood for this build had been reclaimed from other burnt out homes

Starting the Journey of Personal Growth

The story about my home came to mind when I was thinking about how we explore personal growth. Some will just try to ‘fix’ what they think needs improving without digging very deep. Others will realize there is a need to dig deeper, to move past what we’re not conscious of to find what drives our choices, attitudes and beliefs from our subconscious.

Our life experiences all have an impact on our day to day living, yet, a lot of those experiences and their impact on our lives ends up residing in the area of the mind’s ‘studs’ hidden by what we know, or think we know. Before considering any personal growth we live life tethered to our own ‘shores’. They provide us with a sense of stability and security. Those senses can be both confining and comforting.

There’s a sense of comfort there on those shores. Until there isn’t. That is when we start considering maybe there could be more. Maybe we might want to more fully understand who we are, what we could do, what we can be. That’s going to take a journey through the inner-self.

Leaving the Shores of the Comfortable

Deciding to explore ourselves on a deeper level means leaving the comfortable shores of life we’re resting on and exploring inward. Going into our uncharted seas. Like the waters of the oceans, those can be turbulent times. Finding navigational aids to plumb the depths of our consciousness is not easy.

We don’t always know what to do with what we find, but we’re on a journey of exploration. We need to learn to question long-held beliefs, confront fears and deal with a lot of uncertainty. When we dive into the depths of the consciousness, we’re going to find innermost feelings, aspirations and potentials we’re not aware of. They wont always square up with what we already know and believe. In most cases, they wont square up at all.

The journey begins to find what we didn’t know. All exploration is about the unknown. There will be waves of uncertainty before starting to discover strengths and resilience we may not have been aware of. We may learn we can cope with adversity, adapt and embrace change.

Getting To the Destination Isn’t Easily Charted

Our consciousness holds far more than we’re aware of. We’ll likely discover aspects of ourselves we’re not aware of once we stop hugging the shore and explore where the journey takes us. To stop hugging the shore, it means seeing new experiences, challenging preconceptions and confronting insecurity. We have to be audacious and willing to ask questions, to challenge who we are and who we want to be.

It’s challenging. It can be stormy. Sea-sickness of guilt, regret and painful memories can happen frequently. Calm seas can be hard to find. The journey may be long. It may be made more difficult. Trying to live in the outer-world as the inner-world becomes rocked and shifted.

Eventually, you will awaken to a new sunrise over a new and unfamiliar space that somehow feels like the place you’re eager to make your new home. A new place to reside and use to guide yourself through the world that remains largely unchanged while you view it and yourself with new eyes.

Shadowspub writes on a variety of subjects as she pursues her passion for learning. She also writes on other platforms and enjoys creating books you use like journals, notebooks, coloring books etc. Her Nicheless Narrative podcast airs on Thursdays each week.

NOTE: unless otherwise stated, all images are the author’s.

Some of the image work may have been done in Midjourney for which I hold a licence to use the imges commercially.

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