Reinvention is a gift you can give yourself again and again
The below is my response to a prompt (“new beginnings”) in a writers’ group. Joining the group was, in itself, a new beginning for me. As such writing often does, it crystallized something about this particular moment in my life.
I see new beginnings as opportunities to reinvent myself. To try a new activity, to meet new people, to be introduced to new ideas. New beginnings are also opportunities to discard things that no longer fit who I now am or who I am trying to become.
Over the course of my life, I have chosen new beginnings with some regularity. Examples are changing countries (India to US), states (Northeast to South to West), religions (Hindu to Unitarian-Universalist), professions (software engineering to writing), and many more.
Each of these transformations has been, not so much a rebirth, which implies the end of something, but the emergence of a new symbiotic self. The old identity and the new one continue to interact, charge, and enlarge each other.
But now I am at a point where I searching for yet another new beginning. What I would like is a new project or pursuit into which I can pour my spiritual. emotional, and mental energy.
- Should I write a book about being a “third way”…
