“You’re not here any more.  You’ve got to leave in order to return to the present.”*

It’s the archetypal narrative arc of a great story: the reluctant protagonist leaves “here” and will wrestle their way back to the present.

Jerome Bruner refers to there being “no internal push to growth without a corresponding external pull”.**

Otto Scharmer^ speaks of there being internal context, external context, and a third: the context of the emerging future.

I offer these to understand gift.

We use the same word to mean three things.  There’s the gift which comes to us, which we must acknowledge (gratitude) – the external.  Then there’s the gift within us (more than the sum of our talents, passions, and experiences) – the internal.  And there’s a third gift, the one we produce (the emerging future) – that which did not exist before.

The question is, will you be present to this new possibility if you remain here?

(*J, Paulo Coelho’s friend and guide, quoted in Paulo Coelho’s Aleph.)
(**Jerome Bruner, quoted in Denis Wood’s The Power of Maps.)
(^In Otto Scharmer’s Theory U.)