And so….after all the pedestals she was placed on… she took herself down and knelt in the green green earth…finally free to care for her little lambs and kiss the ground she walks on….and love it all……. The message i keep from this is that what matters most is how we care, not the pedestals we are placed on. Pedestals and prisons have much in common.
The photo is not mine, but my cousin’s. It is a dear statue that she cared well for and means so much because it was her grandmother’s. And, what happened, was not vandalism. Over time, water likely seeped into cracks in the foundation that affixed her to her pedestal. Eventually, an accidental brush with a lawn mower finally broke her from her pedestal…and yet… I think she is more beautiful now, just the way she is!
Because it is a passion of mine, I work as an RN at a women’s prison. It is a true privilege to witness and walk with the women I serve, knowing we all have our prison cells, little or big places in our lives that make us feel trapped– places in our lives that curtail our freedom in some way, often created by our own choices but also often influenced by things we have little control over. And, I have watched in wonder as some use those prison cells like a chrysalis, places of confinement to transform into flight. I celebrate them and they bring a kind of permission for me to do the same thing with my own stuck places.
Though the pedestals of admiration, high regard, and fame may have their allure, pedestals and prisons have a lot in common. That is why I am constantly falling off or taking myself down from the little pedestals others place me on. I don’t want to be a saint or a hero if that means I can’t live authentically. I don’t like to be affixed that way. And, I am thinking of church/spiritual leaders and politicians and cultural icons who are placed on pedestals that must at times feel very lonely and treacherous.
Humans don’t belong on pedestals. Trapped and enshrined by the allure of others’ admiration for something we have done or an ideal we may represent for them can affix us to inauthentic responses to our lives, afraid to lose our standing. Yet life seeps in, and like water can wear away our ability to stand on those pedestals until one day, there is that inevitable fall. We break from our pedestals little by little or all at once….and sometimes those broken moments are exactly what liberates us to live authentic and free , grateful to celebrate the wonder of life, and to finally celebrate that we are human after all.
What pedestals are you wishing you might come down from? What pedestals are you willing to release others from?
