Jenga & The Tipping Point
This is the last piece of the Jenga puzzle that collapses the once stable tower, the one that is always the hardest, riskiest to pull and place on top of the inevitable fall and ending of the game.
Sometimes, the game resumes, trying to go father with the same pieces. Same Shit, Different way. Same result, eventually.
Eventually, we have to face the fact that the game was designed to crash, fall apart.
Rather than looking at the falling of the tower, the dismantling of the project, I look at it as the final breakdown of what isn't working and the most incredible opportunity to start an entirely new game.
Moving to Boston in 2007 was the new shiny, unopened game to play. It was intriguing and something about its ethos spoke to me at the time.
I guess you could say it was a gift that I got, not one I chose or put on a list of things I wanted. I just accepted the game and followed a boy up to Boston to live out a fantasy, that in all honestly, wasn't even mine in the first place. His job. His choice. I followed. So, I guess on some level I just had to make this work, I had to make it fit. I had to make the fantasy fit.
I was 26. I wore turtle necks, My hair was brown and I flat ironed these glorious lion's mane curls, I shopped at Ann Taylor Loft...and I just puked writing that.
Beyond the esthetic of my poor, unfortunate mid-twenty self, I was partial to the arrogance of academia and wore going to Harvard like a big ol' badge of honor that I cast out from my judgement throne. I was self-serving, closed minded, emotionally unevolved and legit had my whole damn life mapped out, down to what I was going to name my two children. *eye roll*
I fit with the vibe of the city that I didn't choose to live in, in the first place.
So, I accomplished. Checked boxes and thought that personal development was about what I could DO with a passport, ya know?
I pulled the easy pieces from the Jenga tower first and called that winning.
Once more space was made and the easy pieces were already pulled, I had no choice but to start pulling harder pieces, taking bigger risks, asking harder questions, letting go of ideas and people and jobs that no longer worked.
The new found freedom of risk taking and standing proudly in my self felt great and each time I elevated, the Jenga tower collapsed. It was like I just couldn't make my evolution work and keep life stable.
The tower crashed down the day my dad died. It all fell apart. What I knew to be true didn't fit anymore. NOTHING ABOUT MY REALITY WORKED ANYMORE.
Healing grief and loss and pain was all too much to also put away the pieces of game I have been playing, not with any particular joy, but just with familiarity. So I built a "new" life, still in Boston, as a new person in the same place.
I was doing my best to evolve and keep constant at the same time.
The game was easy at first, liberating to feel some sense of accomplishment, even though the tasks were super easy, familiar.
Talk about an evolution away from the agrarian calendar and sad version of success: let's spend 5 months being miserably cold and grey, counting down the days for school vacations, pensions and warm weather, only to complain about that. So, we enjoy two weeks at the end of September...the most important block holding up our game
That Jenga block doesn't sustain anymore. It isn't enough.
So, let the shit come crashing down.
The last piece of our own life's puzzle, the final shedding of what isn't working is what will make the structure we have set up in a life, in a city, with what we have known to be true, tumble down, crashing and spilling out in front of us.
Rather than looking at the falling of the tower, the dismantling of the project, I look at it as the final breakdown of what isn't working and the most incredible opportunity to start again.
You got this.
xoxo
-Angela
