We’ve Heard This Before

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Human beings have been writing and talking about love, loss, identity, belonging, fear, failure, forgiveness and purpose for thousands of years.

We keep returning to the same territory because each generation has to encounter it for itself.

But there may be another reason.

Sometimes we have heard something before. We simply weren't ready to hear it.

A sentence that means almost nothing to us at twenty can stop us at forty. Advice we dismissed years ago can suddenly seem remarkably clear. Something a parent said, something we read in a book, a question someone once asked us, we may have understood the words perfectly well.

We just didn't yet understand what they had to do with us.

Then something shifts.

Perhaps we have failed at something, lost something, loved deeply, been disappointed, succeeded and discovered it wasn't enough, or simply grown tired of repeating ourselves.

Sometimes what we have known for years finally becomes real to us.

The message hasn't changed. The listener has.

We may not be able to explain this readiness. Often, an old answer simply stops satisfying us.

A familiar way of living becomes uncomfortable. We hear ourselves saying something we have said a hundred times and, for the first time, wonder why we still believe it.

Conclusions about ourselves that have quietly become facts in our own minds begin to look less certain.

We may understand where they came from and why we have carried them for so long.

That understanding matters.

But there is another question.

When does an explanation for who we have become begin to limit who we might still become?

Insight can be seductive. We can become remarkably good at explaining ourselves.

We know why we avoid conflict, why we are afraid to fail, why we need approval, why we repeat certain patterns. We can name the patterns and trace their history. And continue doing exactly the same thing.

At some point, the story that helped us make sense of ourselves can become the reason we give for remaining unchanged.

Understanding is not the same as change.

Perhaps this is another reason we need repetition.

We may have to encounter the same truth many times before it moves from something we know to something we recognize, and from something we recognize to something we are willing to practice.

Hearing is not recognizing.

Recognizing is not choosing.

And choosing once is not the same as living differently.

We do not have to condemn ourselves because we did not understand something sooner.

Nor do we have to assume that because we understand it now, the work is finished.

There may be a considerable distance between the moment the light comes on and learning how to live by what we can finally see.

Maybe André Gide was only partly right.

Perhaps the problem isn't that we weren't listening. Maybe we weren't ready for what we heard.

But once we are ready, another question waits.

What are we willing to do with what we finally understand?

We may keep returning to the same old questions.

But we don't have to keep giving them the same answers.