Nine months later...
It's done. After vacillating endlessly over the past nine months , I competed for, was offered, and accepted the role of Manager of the Growth Planning and Analysis Team of the Ontario Growth Secretariat at the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure... (what a mouthful!). D loves to say it with one big intake of a breath.
As Rilke beautifully says, the future enters us and transforms us long before we know it (see quote below)... change has come to me in that way. As I began to feel satiated with one course of study or work, the other seemed ready to begin and open up to me- architecture, on to urban design, then strategic planning... my life too, my identity, my sexuality, my relationships... moving, building, constantly evolving, ever better, ever stronger, never with regret, always with promise, never having to leave one to take on another.
Mentors have often put me in positions to challenge me and I've performed. Lovers, friends and family have held me to higher standards and I've risen to the occasion. I feel like a puppet in many ways, yet I know it is I that did it and nobody else. I look back and owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to so many people who had faith in me, and more importantly, gave me the chance and had the patience to let me find it in myself... thank you.
"It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate." - Rainer Maria Rilke
As Rilke beautifully says, the future enters us and transforms us long before we know it (see quote below)... change has come to me in that way. As I began to feel satiated with one course of study or work, the other seemed ready to begin and open up to me- architecture, on to urban design, then strategic planning... my life too, my identity, my sexuality, my relationships... moving, building, constantly evolving, ever better, ever stronger, never with regret, always with promise, never having to leave one to take on another.
Mentors have often put me in positions to challenge me and I've performed. Lovers, friends and family have held me to higher standards and I've risen to the occasion. I feel like a puppet in many ways, yet I know it is I that did it and nobody else. I look back and owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to so many people who had faith in me, and more importantly, gave me the chance and had the patience to let me find it in myself... thank you.
"It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate." - Rainer Maria Rilke
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