My family is off on another adventure. We are making this summer count! I had forgotten about this question from a post in 2022. I needed to read it, and I hope it’s what you need too. Happy July!
I have a small notebook in which I try to remember to jot down phrases or questions that stand out when reading. I was flipping through the notebook when the following question caught my eye.
What can you learn from your reluctance?1
I love any invitation to use the chaos of everyday life to build self-awareness and depth. What can you learn from your reluctance feels like one of those hidden questions in the obvious.
Quantum physics tells us that everything has energy. A sense of movement and power. I find it endlessly fascinating to think about the energy of words. Is the animating energy powerful? Is it more subtle?
Reluctance has subtle energy. Its opposites include enthusiasm or determination. Enthusiasm and determination are not quiet! Reluctance is softer; it's unsure and tentative. Reluctance feels a bit slower, a hue of gray. Maybe that's why the question stood out to me. Shades of reluctance are something we navigate daily.
Reluctance feels like a close cousin to hesitation. Both of these are subtle feelings; what intrigues me is the question of what we can learn from the places we find ourselves reluctant or hesitating. What if we noticed our reluctance or hesitation and paused, with curiosity, to explore why?
Reluctance is a gentle teacher. When we feel reluctance, it can show us what we value, help us clarify what is important, and reveal unknown fears. I wonder if it is a smaller and deeper form of wisdom.
The prevailing cultural message is reluctance and hesitation will prevent you from living your best life. (Just Google quotes on hesitation or reluctance…) You'll quickly see that hesitation prevents you from going big: that giving into hesitation is giving into fear. I'm not so sure…
What if the slight movements of hesitation and reluctance are invitations to curiosity, clues to your values? What if bigger and broader isn't the goal? Reluctance and hesitation aren't good or bad; they are just teachers, invitations to deepen and grow.
When you find yourself struggling against an idea, feeling, or invitation, may your eyes find the unseen sparkle of learning beckoning you to new understanding. When you feel yourself hesitating, may you remember the gentleness of its call, pause, and ask what invitation it might have for you. May your eyes be opened more each day to the invitation that is yours to grow smaller and deeper.
Let's let our hesitation and reluctance be a teacher. When hesitating about saying yes or no, posting an idea on social media, or sharing something that moved you, pause and probe the gift of your hesitation.
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
This book is described as, "In vivid poems, she shared what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement." I have read a couple of verse novels, and I always love them. It's fascinating how few words it takes to tell a compelling story. February is Black History Month, and I'm doing what I can to make my reading reflect learning. I would highly recommend this novel.
“I believe in one day and someday and this perfect moment called Now.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I listened to this very short book as an audiobook read by the author. I loved it because she is an African woman writing about feminism from an African perspective. "Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminist for the twenty-first century rooted in inclusion and awareness. She shines a light not only on blatant discrimination but also the more insidious, institutional behaviours that marginaize women around the world." I loved the audiobook; hearing it read in the author's voice was powerful. The book is an adaptation of her TED TALK.
“My own definition is a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists
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I try to pay attention to words or phrases that stand out in my reading and listening. A spiritual practice called Florliledgium collects short, interesting pieces {words that “sparkle” up} and puts them together. This is kind of like that. I am watching for things that sparkle—gathering them and seeing how they work together and what message, mantra, or new idea might arise.
A Practice:
Read slowly.
Notice if a word or phrase stands out to you.
How do the words make you feel?
Is there an invitation?
“Even the silence
has a story to tell you.
Just listen. Listen.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin
“I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this “In order to love you, I must make you something else”. That’s what domination is all about, that in order to be close to you, I must possess you, remake and recast you.”
― bell hooks, Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies
“There are two questions that we have to ask ourselves. The 1st is " Where am I going?" and the 2nd is "Who will go with me?"
If you ever get these questions in the wrong order, you are in trouble.”
― Howard Thurman
From The Flowing Grace of Now; Encountering Wisdom Through The Weeks of the Year by Macrina Wiederkehr