To boldly walk…
I love Star Trek. I have since I was a kid and fell in love with TNG thanks to a babysitter/grad student of my dad’s. I have been loving the remakes that have taken storm the past few years.
I started watching the final season of discovery last night and the theme of it seems to be love uniting and building bridges across differences. (I haven’t finished episode 2 yet so I could be horribly wrong). But this seems to be a theme pushed forward in all of the Star Trek reboots. It’s not black and white, but a variety of grays with value systems guided by love and curiosity being the deciding paths.
Could I be projecting my own value systems? Sure. But I do believe these themes are present and active in the series. One of the things I spend a lot of time thinking about is not getting stuck in the coulda shoulda woulda of life and my business. There are lessons to be learned for sure, but once I get them I need to move forward.
I paused episode 2 to write this post as Saru on Discovery shared what can be summarized as trust the process, no one knows what the future holds. I found such comfort hearing this as it echoes what I have learned in recovery and my business lessons. Trust the process— it can move forward, get stuck, regress, and regrow. The theme of second chances also comes up and that too is so very powerful.
In my life I have received a number of second chances— living after my TBI, living through active alcoholism, the challenges of my business in all of its incarnations, the pandemic, a car accident that disabled my dominant wrist, and am currently working through the failure of my first and only big order of ceramics that was meant to be an avenue to get my work to the world while my wrist is not capable of what it once was.
Of course, I had to act and make choices on how to respond to all of these situations. I haven’t always made the best ones, but have always done my best. 2024 has been rough for me personally and professionally, with my father and the order that wasn’t completed to the level of quality the samples indicated.
I have written about all of this in previous posts and don’t want to delve in again. What I end up thinking about are the boundaries we build and enforce and change in our personal and business relationships. To go forward with compassion I find that these boundaries can be complex— how do you draw lines in the sand that still have space for reassessment? Or lines in the sand that leave bridges open to other areas? And when do you decide that the boundary must be set more firmly in concrete?
I am speaking in metaphors, but these are the important questions as one moves through the stages of life. What is acceptable to me and what isn’t? This also brings to the forefront of how women are taught to be from a very young age—adaptable, to put others at ease, to prioritize others needs before our own… There are many times when moving forward that I feel conflict in how I should approach things. TBH— I can be such a Patsy! I don’t like confrontation and really like to leave as many bridges open as possible. But do have to stand up for myself and my business.
As I sit in decisions of how to move forward I realize how like my father I am, which is both wonderful and bittersweet as he is nearing the end of his life. I am reminded of the Star Trek theme — to boldly go where no man’s gone before— which I will adapt to boldly walk the paths before me. My universe is still unfolding and that is the marvelous thing about life.