“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.)