Emblems of Becoming

Art: my favourite emblem of becoming, The Velveteen Rabbit

The equinox beckoning from the other side of the weekend and we are finally beginning to feel the clarity that comes with her balancing, or at least the promise of it. Some of the puzzle pieces are wafting into view and we can steal long moments to gaze on what we are pointing the bow of our little ship towards.

As I spin the wheel in the process I have been musing on becoming, a recurrent thread in each and all of our stories as we step through the halls of our lives. As far back as the sixth century BC, Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that nothing in this world is constant except change and becoming. Deeply connected to the natural world, he saw our lives as a whole that flows like a river. Our becoming, he asserted, required both movement and evolution. Aristotle framed it as potential and coined its realisation as a guiding principle. In Buddhism, it remains the condition for perpetual rebirth.

Our becoming is our neverending story. It stretches us to keep learning, to reinvestigate and draw different conclusions, to grow and change. It means that sometimes we will be in between, wandering the great divide between what we once were and who we are yet to be. A foreign terrain that can feel overwhelming as its little dawns illuminate the pathways.

Keep going. The siren song of your muses will not fail you. The thrumming in your chest is counting the steps. Your soul already knows the way. We are supposed to tell our story walking.

Keep going.


Words c. Kerrie Basha 2017