Finding the Treasure

Joseph Campbell said, “Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” This happens to be one of my favorite quotes, and I dive into the idea of it fairly often.     

This morning I asked myself what I’ve been tripping over the most lately, and the answer that came was, “Regret.

I got an immediate insight into what regret really is. It’s unforgiveness. It’s me, holding a grudge against myself. It’s something truly unhelpful—damaging, in fact—disguised as something virtuous. We are trained to believe that regret is a virtue, something that serves ourselves and others because it supposedly keeps us from repeating our mistakes. But that’s not it at all. It’s an anchor. It keeps us looking behind ourselves at things we wish we’d done differently in the past; at choices we wish we hadn’t made and actions we wish we hadn’t taken.           

How does that serve us, though? How does that serve anyone? How can keeping ourselves hooked into our past mistakes be a positive thing at all? And why is it so much easier for so many of us to forgive others than it is to forgive ourselves? I don’t know. What I do know is that self-forgiveness is worth doing for our own benefit, and for the benefit of others.    

I mean, really… If I’m hooked into feeling bad about myself because of things that I can’t change, how can I make truly healthy decisions now? If I’m trying not to make the same mistakes I’ve made in the past, how am I not bringing that stuff forward into my current choices? This creates a tug-of-war within me that can only tear me apart. An inner tug-of-war can never heal anything.      

It turns out that there IS a “treasure”—a gift—in this that has been right here and available for me to receive throughout a lifetime of tripping over this one thing. And that is the simple truth that I can end this tug-of-war any time I choose to, simply by letting go of that end of the rope. Only then can I be really free to make all-new, untainted, empowered choices that have the potential to benefit myself, those that I love, and the community that I serve.

What about you? What do YOU keep tripping over? And, if you were to look at it closely, what "treasure" would you find in it?