With Purpose Success, part 46

Life is like a snake shedding its skin. A third metaphor that fascinates me is that of a snake shedding its skin. This is a somewhat bizarre occurrence, and yet it happens regularly in the reptile world. A snake basically rebirths itself every month or so by crawling out of its own skin-often right before a big event like mating or giving birth. A snake must literally reject its own skin in order to change and grow. When it does this, what emerges is a more beautiful, more mature version of itself. A snake has to fight and struggle to wriggle free of its old skin. It's an exhausting process that may take up to two weeks, during which time the snake becomes irritable and partially blind. If you ever see a snake shedding its skin- even a pet-take special care! It may be unusually aggressive. Yet this is all part of the snake's nature-it must periodically go through this odd ordeal to become something bigger and better than it was before. 

This isn't a bad way to go through life either-intermittently struggling with who you are and making the big effort to shed parts that aren't working anymore, and ultimately emerge as a new and improved you. It represents a path of continued growth. If you're going through life this way, congratulations-you'll never be bored and you'll always be growing. 

But no matter how many times you get bigger and better-you'll always essentially be what you were, just a little more of it. 

Life is like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Why settle for shedding your skin and becoming a little improved, when you can transform into something fundamentally different? This is what I believe the new middlescence is really all about; this is what moving from material success to a life of higher purpose really offers. You can be a simple earthbound caterpillar one day, working diligently at keeping house and striving for some security, and the next day blossom into a soaring butterfly that brings a touch of beauty into the lives of all who behold you. This isn't just blooming once and going to seed. This isn't just blooming over and over but never changing. This isn't shedding your skin and coming back better at what you already do. This is a spectacular metamorphosis into some thing different than what you've been before. There may not be anything more majestic than your potential for utter transformation in adulthood. 

Listen to the words of Marianne Williamson from A Return to Love:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves: Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? 

Actually who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. 

We are all meant to shine, as children do. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. 

Over the decades of my career, I've always been fascinated by people who reinvent themselves in adulthood. You know, the mom who goes to law school at forty-five, the person who comes back from health problems to run a marathon at sixty, the couple that falls in love at eighty, the retiree who starts a whole new career after his retirement life stage begins to bore him. At the same time, we were raising our own children and reading them stories at night. We were struck by the fact that stories about personal reinvention in adulthood just weren't present in the popular childrens' books that we were reading to our kids-in which maturity was often portrayed as a time for crones and geezers.