A dear friend of mine gave me a book several years ago that I read and still remember. This is more remarkable than it sounds. I read a lot. And even the books I loved I can barely recall the characters or plot a month later.
The book was The Dream Giver by Bruce Wilkinson and Heather Kopp. The story is a parable about the hero’s journey, which is really our journey through life. The story talks about all the obstacles the main character must face in order to reach The Dream. Somewhere in the middle, the hero reaches the Flatlands. It’s the place you come to after you’ve decided to go for something and have invested all sorts of time, energy, and cash into it and then you have to wait. It seems that nothing is happening. No connections are being made. No big news is arriving. You. Are. Just. Waiting. for any of the seeds you planted to sprout.
Sometimes your time in the Flatlands is so long that you can’t remember why you started the journey in the first place. The Inner Critic assails you with doubts. “You’re going the wrong way! I told you this wouldn’t work! Everyone hates your ideas! You’re so stupid!”
This experience, which is sometimes called a test of faith, has been documented in many stories: Jesus’ forty days in the desert, Ulysses’ ten-year journey to reach home in the Odyssey.
The point of the Flatlands is to keep walking until you get to the other side. In the Flatlands you have to prove your faith in your higher power and in your own strength and stamina. You have to believe so strongly that you are on the right path that you continue to put one foot in front of the other even when it seems ridiculous that you are still walking at all.
When you are visiting the Flatlands, what other parts of your life can you enhance? Perhaps it is time to play with beauty, deep conversations, art, a good book, music, a vacation, a massage. Remember the Pleasure Deficit post? Well, I am proud to say that I scheduled a massage the day I wrote that post and today I get to have it!
Oh How I needed to hear this today!!!
It is confirmation of some confirmation.
I gave my flatlands a name – the “knackers Yard”. A place where I could put down a lot of the bagagge I had picked up over the years. It has and is very painful but I know it will eventually be for my good and the good of others around me.
Yesterday a friend of mine gave me a peice of paper with one word on it…..
I will be blogging about it tonight.
I soooo needed to hear this today also! (Go, Tim Ocsko!)
This, plus the Smackdowns post about when to stop pushing, have inspired me to step back, float more, steer less and start having much greater faith that I will both be promoted soon and be able to move to a new department I am targeting.
I’ve been told that the two are mutually exclusive, but I’ve been sowing the seeds for each for a long time and now I’m going to walk through the Flatlands and have more faith that they both can happen and soon.
Thanks for this post!!
MFK (Open-Source Career)
http://mfkblog.wordpress.com/
PS – I envision my Flatlands being a sort of Mad Max type scene.
Thank you for this post, as well as all the rest. I am new here and I connected immediatley with the messages posted. My life has been on a difficult path this past year (death of a parent, questioning my marriage, working mother guilt, and where is my career going) and the words posted here are so helpful.
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