Edges

A common metaphor used in our everyday language.

‘What’s your edge?’

‘I’m on the edge?’

‘Jumping off the edge.’

 ‘Going over the edge.’

‘Finding my way back from the edge.’

We have all kinds of edges.

Learning edges.

Comfort zone edges.

Emotional edges.

Capacity edges.

And more.

My daughter, currently undergoing investigations in hospital finding her hypoglycaemic edge,

I find myself occupied by a multitude of edges – transitional edges – that are bringing me right up and close in to my capacity edge.

Relational transitions

Family transitions

Children transitions

Community transitions

Country transitions

Work transitions

Embarking on a path that is only made by the walking.

In this multitude of transitional edges may lie the promise and possibility of working with these edges.

What might it mean to “work the edge”? To just hang out at this edge, only knowing perhaps that which we leave behind, with no real idea of what lies ahead.  A journey of trust, letting go, patience, kindness, and entering into the unknown.  This way of engaging with the edge requires an awareness of the edge itself, an awareness even that there is an edge, and that we are intimately stepping out onto it.  This engagement requires of us a willingness to stay, to not turn away, to not retreat from the edge back into our comfort zone, to be gentle and allow all to show up and be known.  In that, the possibility may open of venturing into the unknown, the unknowable, that ultimate creative space we long to engage with but often turn back from in fear, often at the very last minute.  To stand at the edge and hang out awhile allows the edge to expand, for more space to be generated and for a whole new adventure to unfold.

So what is your edge?  Do you know when it arises?  Or do you turn away before feeling its terrifying height?  Turn away from the possibility of putting just one foot wrong and going over?  Turn away from the possibility of stepping into your own life in all its glorious uncertain unfolding.  Have heart, have courage, take the plunge, know your edge.  Explore your edge with curiosity.  Hang out there awhile and stay with the discomfort long enough to allow the edge of this moment to expand.  You may be surprised, and rather than despair you may finally sit and feast on your life.

Love After Love

The time will come


when, with elation,


you will greet yourself arriving


at your own door, in your own mirror,


and each will smile at the other’s welcome

and say, sit here. Eat.


You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart


to itself, to the stranger who has loved you


all your life, whom you have ignored


for another, who knows you by heart.


Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott