I’m listening to David Brooks’ audiobook The Road to Character and during the closing of the chapter on George Elliot (the Victorian-era English novelist who’s real name was Mary Ann Evans) I heard a line, in the context of a friend describing Elliot, that nearly stopped me on my run:
Large angels take a long time unfolding their wings, but when they do, soar out of sight.
I kept repeating it in my head as I finished my final mile, determined to write it down and wondering why I’d never heard this metaphor before. But upon a quick google search, it really does look like it’s only attributed to Elliot’s friend in a few biographies describing Elliot at the beginning of their acquaintance, musing that Elliot either has no wings or they are budding still.
For Elliot, it meant that she took a long time from a precocious and self-centered young woman to the writer she became and we remember (though I’ll admit I haven’t read Middlemarch or any other of her work).
It takes a long time to get where we’re going. To understand if there’s really a ‘destination’ at all. It takes a long time to become ourselves. The act of unfolding takes time and makes us unrecognizable — as we’re hunched or crippled, wings still sprouting. “But when they do, soar out of sight.” Keep unfolding, so we can fly.
To me, this is about potential. Not squashing it in yourself or others. Seeing in one another large angels and allowing (feeding, celebrating) that transformation.
With Love,
Natalie