Life Tips Daily

Friday, May 15, 2009
On Completion and Hope

Spring is a time of beginnings. I love beginnings. I love the creative potential living in beginnings.

And, I have a certain uneasiness, maybe sometimes a terror, of completion. This is probably because I confuse completion with ending, death, nevermore, impossible to alter or evolve, ultimate separation.

So I feel I am overwhelmed with incompletions. Paradoxically, this is hardly true as my life is full of completions. I get things done and done well. Yet, I seem to avoid looking at and recognizing the completions and closures that abound in my life.

I am going to use this post as a way to explore my feelings. From my experience as a counselor I am aware many people have similar issues. If you are one of those lucky individuals with a clear sense of process – of beginning, middle and end – I would ask you to post your words of wisdom to share with the rest of us.

What is a way I can reframe “completion” so that I feel safe and alive?

I just looked up the definition and the etymological root of completion. I could write a book on each of the definitions.

From the Latin root I get the picture of “fulfill.”

The dictionary offers several definitions:

Collected together – ordered.
Run its course – finished, done.
Entire, full, to the greatest extent.
Successfully throw to a receiver – boy, this is important for me as I am a message maker and need to get the message to my audience. If I have difficulty completing I will never fulfill my life’s purpose.
Make whole or perfect – I am so stuck with not feeling whole or loveable/perfect that I project it on to my life and my work.
Hope never lets me complete!

There is an insight forming in my soul as I write. It is about hope. Hope keeps me from being aware of all my “completions.” Hope keeps me focused on the future. Completion is a focus on what has been done in the past.

My painful childhood developed in me such a strong sense of hope and an strong identity with hope. Hope was my survival. To survive I needed to endure and hope. I hoped for rescue. I did not plan an escape. Rescue is wishful and passive. Escape is intentional and active. I did not have a plan! I did not have benchmarks of accomplishment. I had hope.

Like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, I thought sleep (even with all the nightmares) was the way to pass the time until the rescuing kiss touched my lips. Hope kept telling me all I had to do was go to sleep and dream. I did not need to have a plan of action with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

My identification with hope as the path to fulfillment was so powerful that all that I was actually doing to shape my life (when I wasn’t just hoping) seemed like a vague disembodied dream. I couldn’t experience process or completion. I only felt real and my life only felt real when I was hoping.

Hope can be addictive. From a neurochemical perspective, hope triggers the release of dopamine, the pleasure reward neurotransmitter that is the root of addiction. We call addictive, dopamine-producing drugs, dope. My dope has been hope.

Lynn Jericho
There are three metaphors for my gesture in the world and how I suppport my clients, readers and audiences - midwife to the transformative birth of the “I am”, gardener of the flowering spirit of Selfhood and personal trainer for the “I” of your thoughts, feelings and intentions. I guide and support the soul birth of my clients, readers and audiences with compassion and wisdom. This is the birth of spiritual freedom and practical responsibility. Then I cultivate the soil of your future. I nurture the seeds of possibility that germinate in your soul. Thirdly, I create soul aerobics and soul yoga. I design exercises to build strength, stamina and flexibility in the movement between spirit and matter in all areas of your life. I am the facilitator of Inner Christmas, a guided practice of personal renewal and development between December 25 and January 6.