It was a Saturday afternoon and I rested my head against the rain-streaked window of the Valley Metro train. I could see college students scurrying and trudging around under hoods and umbrellas in an uncharacteristically gray, wet day in Phoenix. A clogged manhole cover created a miniature lake outside the the Heard Museum, a lake that I decided to negotiate but had failed. With my soggy feet I sat on the train and peered into the bag of booty that I got at the gift shop (a really good one, by the way, and I know my museum gift shops).
I opened up my new purchase, Keep Going, the Art of Perseverance, by Joseph M. Marshall III, and Old Hawk compares the chokecherry tree to the cottonwood: “You have weaknesses as well as strengths. You have both because in life there is two of everything.” The cottonwood is the biggest and it is strong, but that great strength becomes its great weakness, because it stands up to the winds in the fiercest storm, but it doesn’t bend in the wind like the chokecherry can. Its branches break.
Whizzing past more houses, buildings and power lines, I thought some more about “two of everything.” Everyone and everything in the world has weakness and strength. It’s the people who are strong, not the people who are weak, who are able to admit their vulnerabilities, and receive help for their pain, loneliness, sadness, addiction, learning problem, disorganization, or whatever.
Whatever transformation you want to make in your life, you have the power, the strength, to admit you are weak in that area and get the help. It’s like taking a coin and flipping it over. One side is what you don’t want; flip it over and you’ll see what you do want.
What do you want?
