I love the grand gesture. I love the big proclamations of gratefulness, love. I love the big confessions and repentances, as seen on TV and sometimes in real life. I am a sucker for them.
But, sometimes those gestures can backfire. Sometimes they are overblown hyperbole; goals not attainable, transformations not sustainable. They come from the right place. They are the soul feeling guilty, the heart needing absolution and a gigantic conversion seems to be just the right thing.
I will no longer be the dog, the ass. I will BECOME the good man, the redeemed woman, the solid citizen, the consummate artist we say to ourselves as we cement our resolve to be better.
But the truth of life is that we backslide. The truth of life is that we return to who we didn’t want to be. We don’t completely return. We don’t not make progress. But we don’t usually stay up in the stratosphere of our epiphanies. What we really do is slowly become. We slowly transform. Yes, sometimes it’s faster than other times. But life transformation is not the montage with music score, it is a barely perceptible change in most cases.
It would be so much more fun if it were like in the movies, wouldn’t it? Maybe it would be. But now that I am older I am glad it isn’t. I like the slow change, the real change of becoming better where you don’t lose the good you already are.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“Striving to be better, oft we mar what’s well.” – William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, English playwright