As 2019 approaches:

The nest is a comfortable place. Hard to give it up just for the possibility of flight in the vast space of the unknown and unknowable world beyond what our particular perch allows us each to see—well, see from at least the one perspective our current nest and our singular mind and vision permits. A singular perspective that probably limits or distorts what we can see and understand as much as it fosters our unique vision and insights.

And so, it does seem to be necessary to leave the nest to be and become all that each of us as one-of-a-kind beings can and should be and to see and understand more of the world in which we find ourself.

We may be thrown out of the nest with a nice solid shove from the others around us—those who teach us in one way or another, who guide us intending to or not, who challenge us, who love us enough to insist that we can be and do more. Or by the tendencies some have to hang over the edge of the nest a bit too far—reluctant to leave what is known but called by a changing sense of what is possible and, perhaps, what is necessary. Or, by a growing sense of urgency that causes one to feel that the world we each can see and understand needs more from us—something different—if it is to remain a reasonably hospitable place for any of our fellow nest builders.

Indeed, it seems we don’t just occupy the nest that we find ourselves in when we enter the world in a given time and place. We build new nests repeatedly as our life moves down one path or another. We seem to feel over and over again that we have arrived in a place that we should consider our destination—a conceptual place—a place to which our path has led us. And, it is, perhaps, harder to push ourselves out of those nests we create for ourselves —to give up the notion that we are all that we should be, all we can be or need to be; to question our own success in managing to get though life’s challenges thus far, and to look again with truly fresh eyes (no easy task) at our sense of self in what we believe to be more mature—more completely understood context.

Hard, indeed, to allow the realities of the world around us to throw us out of a very comfortable nest once again. Harder still to toss ourselves out because we have been forced by those realities around us to see what we may prefer not to see—to accept that our work is not done—that we need to learn to fly all over again —perhaps, at times, in very uncertain and darkening skies—that what we thought was done is not yet done—that what we thought could not happen may, indeed, happen if our nests have too strong a hold on us.

As we look ahead from wherever life has taken us so far, it is a challenge to see things afresh, to look closely from our well-crafted perch and to, in turn, move ahead knowing we should never assume that we have arrived. Each day is unique, and that the journey continues for each of us—the future still holding unknown and unknowable possibilities—wonder as well as challenges.

As the new year comes, I wish you a very purposeful jump from the nest in which your currently reside and enlightening and world changing travels in our shared “no-man’s-land” in the year ahead. Who knows what you will find on those travels and what, with courage and kindness, you might be able to see and understand and what you might be able do there—perhaps things of which you did not imagine you were capable—a rather remarkable possibility. But what is certain is that since we are all-one-of-a-kind, only you can do it. In that light, we all need to lean over the edge a bit too far and toss ourselves out of the nest once again because we each are an essential part of the future—a co-created future.