Читать книгу Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment - Barbara Angelis De - Страница 15

I don’t remember how long I ignored my castle. I know that I put it back in the box that night and left it on a shelf in my closet. I was furious that it hadn’t come already made, that I was expected to do something to make it work. I decided that Betsy-Wetsy was the one for me after all, and spent my time pouring water into Betsy’s mouth and waiting for it to come out the other end so I could change her diapers. I soon grew tired of cleaning her up—after all, how many times can you change a rubber baby before the thrill is gone? So one afternoon, I found myself taking the Enchanted Castle out of the closet and placing it on the bed. I opened the instruction booklet and began to read.

It took me several weeks to build my castle. At first, I was very frightened. “What if I make a mistake?” I thought to myself, “and glue the wrong pieces together? What if I can’t figure out what goes where? What will I do if I can’t understand the directions?” It wasn’t long before I found out the answers: I did make mistakes, and had to unglue dozens of little plastic pieces and reglue them in the right place. I did get confused at certain points, and had to ask my mother to help me out. But as the days passed, and I could see the beginnings of a castle forming before my eyes, my fear turned into excitement, the frustration turned into challenge. I would race home from school so I could work on the castle. I would secretly stay up way past my bedtime gluing and assembling, and when it was almost finished, painting.

And then one day, it was done. I sat on my bed and stared at my Enchanted Castle in its place of honor by the window. I knew that it didn’t look exactly like the castle in the picture—the paint was smeared in a few places, the glue hadn’t always dried evenly. But it looked beautiful, and it looked magical. And even more miraculously, I felt magical: I was completely happy and fulfilled, not just because I had an Enchanted Castle to play with, but because I had helped to create that castle. And the castle meant much more to me this way than if it had come ready made, perfect, leaving nothing for me to do but admire it. For the real magic of the castle was that even though it looked like I was putting it together, it was putting me together.

It has been almost thirty years since I made that trip to the toy store. In the decades that have passed, I’ve faced many challenges, trials, and crises, both personally and professionally. There were times when my life looked nothing like the picture I’d always had of how things would turn out for me, but instead, resembled a confused pile of little pieces similar to that castle spread on top on my bed. And at these moments, I often felt angry, frustrated, and frightened, just like I had when I was seven: “Why do things have to be this way?” I’d cry. “Why does life have to be so hard?”

But each time I’d experience these feelings, I’d remember my castle. For just as the ad on the box had promised, my Enchanted Castle did help me learn how to make my dreams come true, my highest dreams: It taught me that life was about putting myself together, and not coming already “finished.” It taught me that the purpose of my life wasn’t to make everything look perfect on the outside, but to grow on the inside as the events of my destiny worked to teach me patience, courage, and self-acceptance.