An idea about progression

Going forward to go back

Jan 08, 2023

I read the idea this week that the energy to go forward comes from the going backward.

I am so excited to hear this! What I think it means is that I can make progress, and then I regress, and in the regression is the information I need to continue truly forward again.

Y’all, my forward-progress-is-the-only-kind-of-valid-progress heart really needed to hear this idea. I can be so hard on myself because I feel like I should be farther along, or I should know how to do things better, or if I step backwards I am a loser and a failure. This idea gives me room to believe that none of those things are true.

Here is the quote that inspired me from Richard Rohr’s newsletter called Daily Meditations:

Most of us prefer the language of courtroom and judgment and contest, where there are a few winners and lots of losers. This has not served history well. The prophetic path talks about a journey of two steps forward that necessarily continues to include one step backward. That falling, that failing, that suffering—use whatever word—becomes the energy for the next two steps forward.

I am not a fan of the winners/losers/right/wrong way of deciding things- this comes from a childhood spent listening to my parents furiously argue with each other almost daily, each trying to prove that they were in the right, each trying to win against the other. And for what? For what?? If I prove that I’m right, that I win…then you’re wrong, and you lose. So here’s this person/situation across from you, that you say you care about, and the most important thing is that you win? That’s fucked up.

Always being right and winning, never failing- that’s what we’re taught. From early childhood it’s ingrained in us. Advance at school, advance at work, and advance in relationships. Forward is the favored and only valid direction. And I call bullshit. Big time.

I could have learned so much from the times I went backward.

I could have gained more perspectives had I embraced curiously returning to where I was before. There could have been a fuller picture. More instructions. Because I had a long standing belief that people who went backward were failing losers, I snubbed the valuable information I could have gained from the one step back and just kept on trucking ahead, doomed to repeat the same two steps forward one step back over and over for years. Because I only valued the forward steps I missed out on actual progression.

Armed with this new idea that EVERY STEP has importance, energy, and meaning I am stepping into 2023 with a true sense of hope and excitement.

Happy New Year!

Soberbia

Discussion about this post