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#014 — In Conversation with Becoming
I thought I was writing a book. Then the book started speaking back.
Pages written months ago began speaking to pages written yesterday. Themes I had not consciously planned appeared across chapters. Questions I thought belonged to one section surfaced somewhere else. Certain ideas refused to leave. Others quietly disappeared.
At some point, the relationship changed. I was no longer building the book. I was accompanying its becoming.
That shift feels important because it extends beyond writing. Many of us approach life as a project to be managed. We set goals, create plans, and define milestones. Intention matters. Direction matters. Yet some of the most meaningful developments in our lives arrive through a different process.
Friendships deepen without announcement. Children grow into themselves while we are looking elsewhere. Partners change in small ways we may only notice years later. A version of ourselves appears that we could not have designed in advance. Becoming often happens beneath the threshold of conscious planning.
This is where witnessing enters the conversation. Witnessing is different from controlling. It asks us to notice what is already unfolding: in the work, in the people we love, and in ourselves. It invites curiosity instead of immediate intervention.
The temptation is to believe that growth comes entirely from force of will. Yet many of life's most important developments emerge through a partnership between intention and attention. Intention provides direction. Attention allows us to recognize what is growing.
Perhaps becoming asks for both: a willingness to shape our lives, and a willingness to be shaped by them. A willingness to witness the becoming of those we love, and to let them witness our becoming.
One thing worth carrying: What in your life is becoming itself, and what would happen if you spent less energy forcing it and more energy witnessing it?
— Judithe
Notes written while a book is becoming.
P.S. The manuscript moves toward beta reader review the end of this month. The book is becoming itself.
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