“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”
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Well, how can the lobster grow? Well, as the lobster grows, that shell becomes very confining, and the lobster feels itself under pressure and uncomfortable. It goes under a rock formation to protect itself from predatory fish, casts off the shell, and produces a new one. Well, eventually, that shell becomes very uncomfortable as it grows. Back under the rocks. The lobster repeats this numerous times.
The stimulus for the lobster to be able to grow is that it feels uncomfortable. Now, if lobsters had doctors, they would never grow because as soon as the lobster feels uncomfortable, goes to the doctor, gets a Valium, gets a Percocet, feels fine, never casts off his shell.
I think that we have to realize that times of stress are also times that are signals for growth, and if we use adversity properly, we can grow through adversity.”
– Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski
You know those moments in video games or adventure movies where the character has to run as the steps fall out from under them? If they stopped for a moment just to breathe they too would fall. That is how I felt all the time. Only running. Even if I have nowhere to run to and nothing to run towards, I must keep running. If I paused for just a moment, even just to breathe, the ground will give out from beneath me and swallow me whole. My most frequent recurring dream is one where I am in a car, usually I am the driver however there are times when I am a passenger watching myself drive. I am always driving too fast, no time to examine what might be up ahead. There is always a break of some sort, a gap I never see soon enough, and I must drive faster to make the jump. The road is always too narrow for the car, I never have a turn I can make to get off the deathtrap roadway. I must make the jump. Usually I somehow make it to the other side. But there are times when there is no other side. There are times when I fall into a ravine, or I don’t make the jump and suddenly I’m on another road below ground level that somehow reroutes me back to the beginning, and I have even missed the ferry and plunged into icy ocean water and watched myself drown. When I woke up gasping for air I could swear I tasted the icy saltwater on my lips. Perhaps is was just the cold sweat. In these dreams I am usually alone in the car. Sometimes I am with my children or family members and they are all crying at me and shouting at me. Sometimes my ex husband is there but his back is turned to me. In my dreams I have seen the back of his head more than I’ve seen his face. Besides the crying, shouting, and indifferent passengers, I am alone. There is no other person responsible for the vehicle and the lives riding within. And I almost always fail. Even though there are times that I make the jump I never seem to reach my destination. I always bolt upright awake catching my breath in a panic…and alone.
Almost every uncomfortable dream I'm driving a car at dangerously unrealistically fast speeds and I can't stop, I can't pull over, I have to keep driving, I have to keep control of the out of control car, even if I die in the process. Most recently I dreamt my car was going over an edge that drops down to a ravine. For the first time, ever, I was able to get out of the car. The car dropped into the ravine and I walked away unscathed. No bolting upright and out of breath, no cold sweat, no crying myself awake. For years I had the aforementioned recurring nightmare of the runaway car and suddenly I was able to get out.
Here's what I think, the out of control car is a representation of my out of control life. The years I have been unable to escape were the years I had bounced around from place to place only to land at my ex-in-laws which, as grateful as I was for the help, was quite frankly miserable. I felt trapped by my own life that didn't seem to actually belong to me. Please don't think me an ingrate, I'm very grateful for having a place to lay my head while I tried to rebuild my life, but I am not going to lie and say it was wonderful. I still had the same recurring nightmares and that means something.
It wasn't until I moved out that the dreams stopped. Now, I don't know if the nightmares are truly done but what I do know is since I moved out into my little apartment I haven't had another nightmare since. I was able to get out of the car. I was able to walk away.
All that time I was afraid, no, I was terrified to make any changes. I'm not exactly afraid of change so much as the possibility of failure. What if I moved out and couldn't afford it and had to move right back to the place that gave me nightmares? What if I signed a lease and then got fired? All of these "what ifs" not only spun in my mind daily but they also haunted my dreams. Haunted or not, I absolutely had to do something, make a change, make a decision and just go with it.
I was horribly uncomfortable, I was suffocating...It was time for me to grow. I had incubated long enough. I had to crack the shell. I had to get out of the car. And once I did, the nightmares stopped. I am still terrified as I have not reached my full potential and may never do so. Terrified or not, I refuse to stunt my own growth any longer. One of the greatest obstacles we have to overcome is the entrapment of our own minds. To get out of one's own way is no small feat. We are our greatest opponents and simultaneously our greatest allies. How difficult a task to face your adversary only to find out it's you.
The world's largest lobster ever caught was 44 lbs. The world's largest tree, the sequoia, measures about 52,500 cubic feet. Mind you, the lobster starts out as small as the head of a pin and the tree was just a seed in a cone much like a pine cone. At their beginning stages these two very different forms of life don't look like they're built for survival. And yet here they are, strong and outliving humans by a long shot.
My comparisons are making me sidetrack. The point is, growth is painful. It never isn't. It is uncomfortable and stifling and keeps me up at night. Or, at least it did. Since I've cracked my shell, I've been able to sleep. I still struggle. We all do. But in all my struggle I will still swim the depths of the ocean and reach to touch the sun. And on the days when I need to rest, I will, because I finally can.
