In the book, Getting Grit, Caroline Adams Miller wrote the definition of hell:
“Someone once told me the definition of Hell: The last day you have on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.”
Imagine what that would be like.
When I do that exercise, imagining, a few things come to mind. I have heard it said that a desire is not placed in a person without the seed that holds the ability to accomplish that desire. I also believe that we don’t always accomplish that desire in a way that we expect. A boy with a dream to win a World Series could become a championship-winning coach. Another belief I hold on to is that the universe, once stretched, can be stretched again more easily, like loosening up a balloon before you blow it up.
What do these beliefs have to do with my quick trip to hell and seeing myself as I could have been? Perhaps I am reminding myself that the achievement of what I desire is still possible.
Who do I see when I look at who I could have been? I see a radiant yogi, a wonder architect, and a compassionate human. Last year, I did a lot of work on my identity from James Clear’s Atomic Habits:
The more you repeat a behaviour, the more you reinforce the identity associated with that behaviour. In fact, the word identity was originally derived from the Latin word essentitas, which means being and identidem, which means repeatedly. Your identity is literally your “repeated beingness.”
After many trials, I settled on who I wanted to be: a radiant yogi, a wonder architect, and a compassionate human. And I am doing my best to live into those by repeating behaviours that exemplify those identities.
To be a radiant yogi, according to Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, is to live with virtue:
Fearlessness, purity of heart, perseverance in acquiring wisdom and in practicing yoga, charity, subjugation of the senses, performance of holy rites, study of the scriptures, self-discipline, straightforwardness, non-injury, truthfulness, freedom from wrath, renunciation, peacefulness, non-slanderousness, compassion for all creatures, absence of greed, gentleness, modesty, lack of restlessness, radiance of character, forgiveness, patience, cleanness, freedom from hate, absence of conceit–these qualities are the wealth of a divinely incline person.
With that comes the eight limbs of yoga: Yama (restraints), niyama (observances), asana (posture), pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), Dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), samadhi (pure contemplation).
To be a wonder architect embodies the principles from Christopher Alexander’s A Timeless Way of Building:
“To seek the timeless way we must first know the quality without a name:…3. The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person’s story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive.”
And Peter Block’s The Answer to How is Yes:
“An architect cares as much about the beauty of things as their more practical properties and how to make them work…architecture brings aesthetics and utility into harmony.”
As a compassionate human, my best self would be an exemplar of Kristin Neff’s definition of compassion (for self and others) in her book, Self-Compassion:
“Compassion involves the recognition and clear seeing of suffering. It also involves feelings of kindness for people who are suffering, so that the desire to help–to ameliorate suffering–emerges. Finally, compassion involves recognizing our shared human condition, flawed and fragile as it is.”
As I lie on my death bed, I hope that my best self, the self I was capable of being is that: a radiant yogi, a wonder architect, and a compassionate human. My best self looks down on my current self and gives her the gift of time. She is urging me with the fiercest intensity not to waste another moment because “it is never too late to be what you might have been.”
