The Edge of All Our Possibility

 

By Lois Sekerak Hogan, Ph.D.

 

The inspiration for my Labor Day reflection this year comes from a quotation by M.S. Radmacher-Hersey:  “It’s not the easy and convenient life I seek, but life lived to the edge of all my possibility.”  What does it mean to stand at the threshold of all our possibility in our work?  Where do we let fear stop us, keeping us safely within our comfort zone?  And what bold possibility do we forfeit as a result?

 

Certainly, there are times when being conservative is prudent, but when playing it safe becomes habitual, a kind of numbness can set in as we sadly move further and further away from taking risks, from speaking our truth, from following our dreams.  Something in the soul begins to wither when we don’t give voice or action to the creative impulses that whisper within.  As poet David Whyte observes, living at the cliff edge of life is about being in a place where we feel a fierce hunger for the exhilaration of feeling fully alive.

 

Edges are about choices and decisions.  They define the territory between the familiar and the unknown, hence they are also about learning and the willingness to be temporarily disoriented.  We may find ourselves in a place where it takes all our courage to imagine taking another step.  We worry there will be no solid footing, we fear we will lose something or be hurt.  Yet, there are times when facing the brink is less a threat to life than the refusal to step out into our own truth.  Something calls us to move out into the darkness, illumined only by an inner vision that draws us like the moon, to an urge we can no longer ignore. Surrendering certainty to step out into the path of no path doesn’t mean there is no path – only that we cannot yet see it.  Perhaps, like the figure in this painting, we will find an unexpected pathway spun out magically beneath our feet, like the web of a spider.

 

I invite you this year to pay attention to the places in your work where you feel on the edge of all your possibility.  Where does your horizon feel too confining?  Where do your toes grip the rim, even as your soul trembles to move forward into unknown possibilities that could become the defining choices of your life?

 

 

Lois Sekerak Hogan, Ph.D.

Consultant in individual/organizational development and change

Crane Neck House

74 Main Street

West Newbury, Massachusetts 01985

Phone:  978-363-2000                       Fax:  978-363-1340

Email:  Lshogan@mediaone.net

 

 

Painting:  Giacomond by contemporary European artist Quint Buchholz, copyright 2000, used by Lois Hogan with permission from the artist.

 

The Edge of All Our Possibility is the fifth in a series of Labor Day reflections honoring the deeper meaning of work in our lives.