Work in Progress
Hello friends,
It’s so easy to judge and criticize ourselves for the ways in which we feel we’re not enough. We can often be our own biggest critics.
There are times when self-criticism is helpful – when it spurs us to make changes in our lives and our relationships that are positive or sometimes even necessary. But there are times too when it’s certainly not. Because self-criticism, when it’s not attached to self-compassion, tends to end up more paralyzing and disempowering than useful.
I’ve often felt that the best antidote to the kind of self-criticism that traps us and shrinks us is to remember one simple truth: that we are all works in progress.
We forget that – again and again and again. But if we learned to hold that truth a little closer, perhaps the inner critic that lives in all of us could hurt us just a little bit less. And maybe, just maybe, we’d also come to judge all those in our lives just a little less quickly.
I wrote this poem a number of years ago, while I was thinking about these ideas, after walking by a construction site near my apartment.
Work in Progress
I’m hanging a sign on myself that says:
”Under Construction- Work in Progress”;
Only then
Might the curious onlookers,
Who pass me by on their own wanderings through this world,
Come to see the invisible scaffolding
That surrounds me.
Only then might they understand
That I am still being built,
That there are surfaces still to be sanded,
And windows to be cleaned,
That there are walls that need to go up,
And walls that need to come down,
That it is loud and messy
This construction site of my life;
Is it not loud and messy
At yours too?
Ari
P.S.
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