Reposted from March 20, 2024
Are you familiar with the Transformers? You know, those robots in disguise? Long before the Transformers movie franchise, there was a cartoon version that captured the imagination of my son when he was only five or six. In the show, there were cars and trucks that transformed themselves into powerful robots to fight evil robots. One year his grandparents sent him some birthday money to buy a toy transformer. The toy was above his age, but really I thought, how hard can it be?
Pretty hard, actually. When I saw the lengthy instruction booklet, I immediately regretted buying the toy. Hesitantly, I handed the car to Chris and began to study each step, aware that there were now clicking noises in the room. There were numerous steps, with a twist this way and twist and turn that way, but definitely not a twist another way. I foresaw a broken toy in our future. Finally I finished reading and turned to Chris to show him how to transform his car into its alter ego robot, but he didn’t need any help. With a beaming smile he held the robot up to me, magically transformed by his little hands, and said, “like this Mama?” Humbled, I replied, “exactly like that.”
I learned a bit about transformation that day. Transformation involves risk and simply believing in our amazing abilities to adapt and change. Sometimes transformation is best served by putting aside the instructions and experimenting on our own. How many twists and turns will it take until we ourselves are transformed from the ordinary to extraordinary? Who knows? There are a lot of unknowns in transformation. Encouragingly, the potential for transformation exists in us all. There is so much more to each one of us than meets the eye.
~Lisa Kiel
Lisa, your writing style speaks to me in so many ways. I guess it’s the way you use the ordinary experiences of life to hone your perceptions. You use analogy in such a way that it takes the ordinary event and expands it to include the larger context that we can all learn from. It just takes a good writer to glean the essential human traits that surface in our everyday interactions, and how we hold these human gifts in common so we can all trust that transformation is within our reach. Maybe not as easy as Child’s play!
Such a beautiful example of how transformation can occur when we are willing to try different paths to make it happen. Thank you, Lisa, for this important reminder.